((James 5:16) Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.)

They say that confession is good for the soul, and they are right (whoever "they" really are). When we keep things bottled up inside us, it just creates a type of emotional and spiritual cancer that can poison and destroy our soul and sabotage our sobriety by keeping us beaten down with guilt, shame, anger, and remorse over the wrongs we have committed against others and ourselves. We fear telling others because we don't want them to think less of us or reject us, and also we know that once the cat's out of the bag so to speak, it will not be so easy to practice our addiction anymore, because they will be watching. Once you do finally confess though, it is like a great load is lifted off of your shoulders. A great sense of relief comes over you because you don't have to expend so much energy anymore trying to hide your sins and keep things stuffed down and secret all the time. It takes a lot of work to practice an addiction. Hiding things actually just fuels our addiction because of the emotional stress and pain that it creates within us.

King David was taking a break from going to war (1 Sam. Ch.11-13), and he just relaxed in his palace with a lot of idle time on his hands (first mistake). As he looked out the window, he saw this beautiful woman bathing nearby on a rooftop named Bathsheba (your addiction), and he was instantly attracted to her. He asked about her and found out that she was the wife of Uriah (normalcy, reason, sanity), a soldier in his army. He took Bathsheba into his palace and had sex with her, and she got pregnant (addiction use and growth). He then tried to cover his tracks by trying to get her husband to sleep with her (desperate attempts to hide our addiction behavior) but he refused, so David had Uriah sent to the front lines of the battle and he was killed. So in effect David murdered Uriah indirectly (we try to murder reason and right to cover and continue our addiction). God was very angry and sent a prophet named Nathan to tell David a story about a rich man that had many sheep, who had stolen a poor mans only sheep. David was furious that this would happen (blindness to our own addiction, hypocrisy, denial, and judgmentalism toward others), and he ordered that this sheep stealer be punished, Then Nathan the prophet said "That man is you David" (intervention and confrontation over our addiction). David broke down and confessed that He had sinned this way and repented before the Lord and Nathan (no more excuses or denial). David married Bathsheba (accepted his addictive condition). The baby they had conceived died, plus David ended up losing his kingdom for a while (experiencing the consequences for our actions committed during addiction). But David’s kingdom was later restored and he had a new baby that lived and ended up being the wisest man in history (besides Jesus) and his name was King Solomon (redemption and restoration).

Why did I tell this story? Well there is a pattern and cycle for our addiction that ends in confession, surrender, and repentance from the heart. When David was confronted face to face by Nathan the Prophet, truth was presented straight to David's face and he had a choice. He could either try to lie and have Nathan thrown out (more denial); or he could confess what he had done to Nathan and God could then forgive him and move him on to the recovery phase. You have a choice today to either keep trying to manage your addiction on your own and just keep getting in deeper and deeper over your head, or you can begin to surrender and just admit what God and everyone else around you already knows. Trying to hide it any longer will just eat at you alive as it did David. Here is what David wrote about how he felt during this turbulent time;