Why Accountability and Willpower Don’t Fix Addiction
Biblical Truth Most Christians Miss
If you have been alive more than a minute, you have probably heard one, if not all, of these Christian sayings from well-meaning people when you told them about a specific problem you were having:
“Just pray more.”
“Just try harder.”
“Get accountability.”
“You need more faith.”
These are not always helpful, are they?
I’m Ana Murby, and this is Honest Christian Conversations, Minisode edition. Thank you for joining me today.
Whether this is your first time or you have been here before, I look forward to walking through this with you, because it’s a lesson I had to learn the hard way.
Confession time: I have said these things from time to time as well. They were even part of my mentality while I was going through my pornography addiction.
“Just pray more.”
“Just try harder.”
“You need more faith.”
These haunted me during my 17 years of being addicted to porn. I felt like a hypocrite because I knew this wasn’t how a Christian lives, and I wanted to stop. I had the willpower and the spiritual desire to be free from porn, but I wasn’t able to stop.
Why not? I was praying, crying, and begging God to take this from me. I believed and demanded in faith that I was already healed, and yet I wasn’t.
Whenever I was in an “I want to stop” mood, I could stop for long spurts before eventually falling back into the same cycle.
What gives? Why wasn’t I getting better?
This question frustrated me often. How about you?
Willpower alone will not get you to reach your goals.
I desire to look as skinny as I did before I had five children, but I also love pizza, burgers, and Mexican food.
I want to work out to get healthier, but I also like sitting and writing.
Now take a moment to think back to a time in your life when you had the willpower to do something and how that went.
Were you able to achieve your long-term goal?
If you said no, don’t feel bad. You aren’t alone.
We all have willpower, but willpower alone isn’t enough. If we don’t turn to God in prayer and do the hard work necessary for freedom, we will eventually fall off the wagon.
Here is a reality check that may help you:
If trying harder worked, you’d already be free.
Yeah, that upset me too when I was early in my recovery process.
We feel empowered when we decide to take back our lives from the things that once held us down, but that feeling only lasts so long before we find ourselves back in the arms of our addiction.
Why?
Because we haven’t surrendered the ‘why’ behind our addiction to Christ, our Savior.
The reason behind your addiction is what you need to work through. That is the key to lasting freedom.
What is your addiction, and why do you think you do it?
Once I started my sobriety journey, God began revealing the deeper reasons behind my addiction. That’s when I realized that wanting freedom wasn’t enough.
My mindset needed to shift from ‘I can do this’ to ‘I can’t do this without God’s help.’
Your mindset needs to change, too.
Once you realize it’s not about what you can do but what God wants to do in you, you can move to the next step of recovery—and this one is helpful, but only if it’s done right.
Accountability
Hear me when I say this: Accountability alone is not enough.
You need the right accountability partners—people who will lift you up, be intentional, pray for you, and do battle alongside you.
When I first admitted my addiction, I told my husband, my family, and just about anyone else who would listen.
I liked that everyone knew about my struggle and that I was working on it.
The interesting thing is that nobody really checked up on me, not even my husband.
Praise God, that didn’t send me back into my addiction. In fact, it had the opposite effect. Knowing that everyone and their mother knew about my addiction helped me stay sober.
You may not be able to do what I did, and that’s okay. Don’t compare yourself to me.
You may need to keep only a few trusted people in the know. Just make sure they are trustworthy and willing to walk alongside you, no matter what.
If you aren’t sure you have anyone to talk to, ask God to bring someone into your life.
Accountability is important, but only when it is done right.
Let’s recap what makes a good accountability partner:
An accountability partner should be trustworthy, patient, full of grace, and willing to do the hard work with you. You don’t need a lot of people—one person or one healthy community may be enough.
Accountability software is another fantastic tool that I took advantage of early in my recovery process. It can be helpful, but only if you are willing to do the hard work as well.
If your goal is to eventually live without accountability software on your devices, then you must be willing to move beyond simply avoiding the behavior and begin addressing the deeper issue beneath the addiction.
You need to move from sobriety into recovery.
If you aren’t sure what the difference is between sobriety and recovery, my episode with porn addiction recovery coach Chris Rogers takes a deeper look at the root of the struggle and how to bring those struggles before God as part of the healing process.
The deeper I dug into the root of my addiction, the more I realized that freedom wasn’t going to come from trying harder.
Before we go, let me leave you with one question:
What if the problem isn’t your effort, but what you’ve been told about change?
Thank you for joining me today. I am so encouraged by this. I hope you are as well.