Many years ago, when I was first starting to deal with people who dealt with addictions, I heard a quaint little acronym that addiction counselors use to help folks with issues stay clean. The idea was, if they kept track of these things in their lives, they could tell whether or not they were at risk to do something stupid, like break their parole when they used something (or someone, not all addictions are to drugs) again.
When I heard this saying, I wondered why we waited to teach this idea to keep until after they had blown up their lives. Sure, in the eyes of the world people with addictions need special help with coaching put their lives back together. Even so, I would much rather teach the same set of skills to people before they needed to put their lives back together. We don’t wait until someone gets in a car crash before we give them helpful hints about driving.
When I read the New Testament, particularly the writings of Paul, I am amazed at how much our daily struggle with sin sounds so much like someone dealing with an addiction. Since God’s word says that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are freely Justified through Jesus Christ,
In Romans 7, St. Paul talks about his ongoing struggle with sin. He says that he keeps doing the very things he does not want to do. He fails to do the things that he wants to do. That sounds very much like the life of someone struggling with an addiction. So, I don’t think I’m putting words in the Bible’s mouth when I say that we are addicted to our sin and we cannot help ourselves. More than that, we are not people born good who fell into the mud of sin and need a good bath. David says in the Psalm 51:5 that he was sinful even in his mother’s womb.
If that seems pretty harsh to you, I invite you to consider the warning 1 John 1:
1 John 1:8-9 If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
Now, when you consider that this letter was written to people who are already believing, baptized children of God, maybe that will help take the ego out of the question. If we (Christians) say that we are without sin, we are kidding ourselves.
I want to be very clear that the list I’m about to give you is not a cure for sin. Only faith in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, and even that is not of our own doing, because of what Jesus has done for us on the cross to pay the full price for our sins, only this can save us. In truth, Hebrews 12 calls the Christian life a battle against sin. In that battle Christ is our only help. Instead, think of this list as a bunch of secondary bad guys. Our battle against sin is hard enough. We struggle against our sinful nature. We struggle against Satan and his minions who want to destroy us. We struggle against this sinful world. Why add an extra pile of bad things to fight? What we already have is hard enough.
So, let us take a look add a list of dangerous situations I find all too clearly in scripture, so that we can avoid them and keep our eyes on the main fight.
The acronym is HHALTS. It stands for:
- Hungry
- Horny
- Angry
- Lonely
- Tired
- Scared
That is catchy and sounds wise, but it is always a good idea to bring human ideas to compare with God’s wisdom. I found a lot of examples in God’s Word.
In the next couple of letters, I want to go through each one. We will look at some examples of these weak times in the Bible, and have a couple of frank discussions about how to be self-disciplined and take care of ourselves to cut down on the times they leave us vulnerable to sinning.
Don’t get me wrong. The Bible is not, first and foremost, about making our lives better or giving us a to-do list. It is about what God has already done for us in Jesus Christ. To that end, I’m going to talk a little bit about God’s faithfulness with every person that we look at. That being said, God’s word says that we are given a spirit of power, love and self-control (2 Timothy 1:7). In the Epistles we are told to teach young men how to control themselves (Titus 2:6). So, we are going to look at times when people lost self-control, and failed themselves or hurt others. Often, both.
We’ve got this list, and I’m going to prove to you that I can find it in the Bible. But what are we going to do with it? I think of my HHALTS list like a bunch of warning lights on my car’s dashboard. Okay, let’s be honest, I think about it like a computer panel in Star Trek, but it’s possible that not everyone is blessed to be the level of nerdiness that I am. So, if you want to think car, you can think car.
On a good day all of those indicator lights are in the green. I have eaten, I’m rested, I’m running my emotions instead of the other way around, I’m not starved for attention, and I’m not afraid. On days like that, I feel like I’ve got my feet on pretty good ground. Let’s be honest, it’s really hard to have all of your body and your feelings in a good place if you and God aren’t walking together, but if I have taken care of myself and rested, I do a lot better with the sins and temptations let the devil, this broken world, and my sinful self routinely throw my way.
It is hard to admit to myself just how much I am a flesh-and-blood human being, how little things like sleep and food have such a big impact on my emotional reserves and my self-control. I was kind of dumb when I was younger and I didn’t think I had to take care of those things. When I look back on times when I made seriously stupid decisions, I see some of those HHALTS lights flashing red in the computer monitor in my brain.
So, since Proverbs 14:8 says that a wise man gives thoughts to all of his ways, and many places say we are to be self-disciplined, I don’t think I’m going outside of God’s word to look at what makes me more likely to stumble and fall and what I can do about it.
These days that means I am frequently deliberate about keeping those indicator lights in the green. I mean, it is kind of hypocritical to ask God in The Lord’s Prayer to deliver me from temptation and then do a ton of things that throw me right into temptation’s lap tied up like a lamb for the slaughter. And of course, figuring out how to take care of these things frequently means going to God’s word, which is always the absolute best tool in our ongoing struggle against sin.
Follow along the next series of posts as we deal with each of the HHALTS in turn and look at what the Bible has to say about it.
Hungry
Horny
Angry
Lonely
Tired
Scared
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