See here for Part 1 and here for Part 3.

Now that we’ve reviewed the nature of spiritual bondage, we can turn to the 12 steps I’ve identified that can leverage the power of the gospel to free you from spiritual bondage. The first six concern preparing to overcome your bondage, while the second six concern actually freeing yourself. I will cover the first six in this article and the second six in the next. Note: I have never been part of a 12-step program like Alcoholics Anonymous and have made no effort to connect my steps to theirs, although I’m sure there will be some overlap.

The Role of Others

Note that your freedom from bondage does not require anyone else to change their behavior, even a spouse or parent. You can show others the way through your success, and you can teach those interested to follow in your footsteps, but you cannot force others to change, nor should you refuse to change yourself if others do not go along with you. Respect the autonomy of others and take responsibility for yourself.

Furthermore, you don’t need help from anyone else to find freedom from bondage. Some recovery programs teach (dangerously, in my opinion) that “you can’t do this alone.” The problem with this attitude is that it can make you feel helpless or unable to succeed if you find yourself without support. However, working with others does make this process much, much easier.

Experts (even non-Christian experts on topics like exploring your personal history to understand the origins of your addictions) can give you knowledge in an instant that might take you months or years to figure out on your own. In addition, support from peers who are also struggling or from those who have overcome bondage themselves and are now helping others can considerably lighten your load and strengthen you with encouragement. They also can pray for you after you confess your sins to them, which can be a fast pass to healing (James 5:16).

In summary, you would be wise to seek help from others throughout this process, but you don’t strictly need them. As Galatians 6:2-5 states clearly, we can bear each other’s burdens, but each of us will bear our own load. If you are unable to find the support you need from others, God will make up the difference.

Now, on to the practical steps for finding freedom.

Step 1: Convert

If you are in spiritual bondage, then at some point you sold yourself into spiritual slavery to your sin in exchange for temporary escape from overpowering emotions or unhappy circumstances. You are thus a “slave of sin” (Romans 6:6). Ever wondered why you fail so persistently to quit your addiction or unhealthy behavior? A slave cannot simply quit being a slave. He can run away, even hide for a while, but his master will be forever seeking him, and eventually he will find him.

To truly escape slavery to sin, you must die to sin, because slavery ends with death. When we enter the Christian faith, we die spiritually to sin and are raised to new life, free from the claims of our former spiritual slaveowners (Romans 6:1-4). Freedom from sin thus requires direct intervention from the One who died to save you from your sins (Matthew 1:21).

In this way, converting to Christianity does so much more than just “save you from Hell.” It also gives you access to spiritual power, resources, and tools to find healing from the suffering you have brought on yourself from your own foolish choices or that was inflicted on you by the evil actions of others. In the faith, you have the opportunity to find a peace that surpasses understanding (Philippians 4:7) and a spiritually (not materially) abundant life (John 10:10).

Note that I said “opportunity.” Being in the faith does not guarantee these things. The blessings of the faith are found through sanctification, which requires stepping out in faith and with courage to obey God’s callings to you. If as a Christian you refuse to face and overcome your sin by God’s power, you will remain in spiritual limbo until you decide to listen and obey God.

If you haven’t read it yet, I strongly encourage you to review How the Gospel Works, because it is the foundation for the approach I am laying out here. Once you understand how the Christian faith works, I would call your attention to a few aspects of it that will be highly relevant to overcoming spiritual bondage:

• If you are not in Christ, the Bible says your mind is set on the things of “the flesh” instead of the things of the Spirit (Romans 8:6). This means, whether you realize it or not, that you are committed to sinning. By contrast, those who are in Christ still sin, but they fight against their sin, instead of allying with it and identifying with it.
  You cannot truly escape something without first renouncing your allegiance to it, which cannot be done without the liberty provided by the Spirit of the Lord (2 Corinthians 3:17). From the moment of our conversion, the Holy Spirit miraculously and powerfully intervenes in our lives to help us overcome sin and live in accordance with God’s will, which is always for our good (Romans 8:28). Obviously, this has significant implications for our attempts to escape spiritual bondage.
• As I will discuss in the next article, to escape guilt, you need freedom from condemnation. To escape shame, you need to become a new creation of intrinsic worth and value that cannot be sullied by the words or actions of others. And to overcome overwhelming life stressors, you need a courage that requires knowing that God is for you, not against you. Only in Christ can you have these three incredible blessings.
• Efforts to develop health for the body are important, but spiritual development is more important (1 Timothy 4:18). Nothing done for your good in this life is worth anything if it leads to destruction in the next (read Matthew 18:8-9 for a blunt presentation of this reality). If you’re not pursuing God, you’re missing the forest for the trees by pursuing health of any other kind without pursuing spiritual health first.

A word on studying the Bible: the most popular English Bible translation is the New International Version (NIV), which is fine for a starter Bible. My personal favorite is the New King James Version (NKJV), which is a good one to have as you go deeper into the faith. I highly recommend using Bible Gateway, which gives you free and instant access to every major translation (you can easily switch between them using a dropdown) and is my online Bible tool of choice.

Step 2: Identify Your Sin

Because it is the nature of fallen mankind that all people are sinners (Romans 3:23) – and if you say you aren’t, you are a liar (1 John 1:10) – you have sin in your life. Furthermore, if you have not developed a mature faith and are not following closely in Jesus’ footsteps in all aspects of your life, you are going to have one or more patterns of sin in your life that are habitual in nature, not merely incidental or occasional.

You may already be aware of what your habitual sin is, but if you need clarity, God gives believers two witnesses to testify to all things concerning Himself: the Bible and the Holy Spirit. These should both be consulted, as without listening to the Holy Spirit, you may end up in heresy while studying the Bible, and without studying the Bible, you may be deceived by false spirits while listening to the Holy Spirit (1 John 4:1).

Studying the Bible and praying should bring you clarity about where you regularly violate God’s Law. If you still need further assistance, consult a Bible teacher (e.g., a pastor) or just ask a loved one who cares about you. If you give them permission to be blunt, you will probably get some honest guidance real quick.

Step 3: Try to Quit

This may seem obvious, but if you haven’t done it before, when you identify a pattern of behavior in your life that the Bible calls sin, attempt to quit. Rid yourself and your home of the sin and any associated paraphernalia. Avoid places and people that would draw you back into your sin. Most importantly, pray to God for freedom and then see if you can stop your behavior through sheer force of will.

This simple exercise separates spiritual bondages from sinful lifestyles. If you cannot quit without compulsively relapsing, your habitual sin is a spiritual bondage.

Step 4: Educate Yourself

Now that you’ve identified a spiritual bondage, you must begin the journey that will not only provide you relief from your compulsion, but also deeper healing and a closeness to God you’ve never experienced before.

As Sun Tzu advised, “Know thy enemy.” If you’re going to overcome an obstacle, you must understand what you’re up against. Moreover, your sin is thriving on your failure to properly understand and explore how it works and what it represents spiritually. You need to bring it into the light so you can see clearly how to slay it.

The Evils of Spiritual Bondages

Know first that every sin represents a spiritual crime and is ultimately an offense against God, who created you and therefore has the fundamental right to dictate your behavior. In Psalm 51, David confesses and processes a grievous sin: he slept with a close friend’s wife (Bathsheba), accidentally got her pregnant, then murdered his friend and married his friend’s newly widowed wife to conceal his own sin. This act caused a rift between David and God that God bridged by sending a prophet to call David out and publicly expose his crime. In the psalm (a song of prayer), David is reconnecting with God and asking Him to cleanse him from the inside out and forgive his sin.

In verse 4, however, David makes a startling statement: “Against You, You only, have I sinned, and done this evil in Your sight.” Now, David is not denying that he has harmed his friend or his friend’s wife. He is simply underscoring that the first and most important problem with sin is its violation of our relationship with God, who created and sustains us and everything else in the universe.

Once we understand this aspect of our sin, we can turn to the next major issue: entitlement. Because we have no right ever under any circumstance to willfully sin, when we do, we are harboring some kind of entitlement that justifies this behavior in our own eyes. We think we are “owed” something that doesn’t belong to us, or we think we are special and don’t have to abide by the same rules as everyone else. You must seek to uncover what lies you are telling yourself to support your sin.

After this, we must recognize how our sin harms others. Let’s say, for example, that you cheat on your spouse with prostitutes. On the one hand, you harm your spouse by violating the oath you swore to be faithful to them, meaning you are betraying their trust and faith in you. You also risk exposing them to an STD you might contract from one of your other sexual partners.

On the other hand, you degrade and abuse the prostitutes by treating them like objects instead of people with inherent dignity who deep down yearn for a decent life, but are instead ensnared in sexual sin, are continuously violated, are most likely lifelong victims of sexual trafficking, are probably harboring the trauma of childhood sexual abuse, and are now most likely addicted to drugs or alcohol to numb the horror of their existence.

Finally, you must be honest about how you harm yourself. In this example, you are hypersexualizing your psyche, such that you look at every potential object of your lust with sexual hunger. Moreover, you may be developing erectile dysfunction or other forms of sexual disinterest in your married sex life. And of course, you could contract an STD, potentially causing permanent illness or injury.

That all represents what your sin is right now. But, as mentioned in the previous article, spiritual bondages escalate. Eventually you will have to go deeper and darker than you ever thought you would, breaking through taboos and boundaries, to find the same sense of comfort, in whatever form your comfort takes (pleasure, peace, excitement, etc.). Therefore, fresh hells exist down the line if you continue in your bondage.

Exploring Your Spiritual Bondage

There are plenty of resources, including Christian ones, about common spiritual bondages (e.g., drugs, pornography) that you can find that can help you with your education process, but you must be ready to embrace the elements of them that are helpful and reject the aspects that might make you feel condemned for your repeated failures or encourage helplessness by feeding a victim narrative.

The one book I’ve found that was both extremely insightful and almost completely compatible with my approach to overcoming spiritual bondage is Overcoming Overeating by Jane Hirschmann and Carol Munter (the article on fasting I’ll link to in the next part of this series alerted me to it), which deals with compulsive eating. Because of our culture’s toxic approach to food and weight, and because everyone eats, I would recommend it to everyone. Otherwise, there’s nothing else I’ve yet found that I can fully endorse.

There are lots of truths that will appear amongst most such guides to addiction and other unhealthy compulsive habits, such as:

• Deep down, you may be far less willing to abandon your bondage than you expect. When you truly get the opportunity, you will realize how much it has come to define you and become a dependable part of your life, even though you may hate it intellectually. You will need to confront this unpleasant truth to be free, addressing this harboring of the enemy within your soul by attempting to get around the side of your sin and come face-to-face with it, so you can see it clearly.
• Most likely those who care about you (parents, spouse, children) have been pleading with you to stop hurting yourself. If so, you have sinned against them by disregarding their pleas.
• You may need to hit rock bottom to truly make the commitment required to escape bondage. Have you ever heard the phrase “moment of clarity”? It refers to that moment when addicts become suddenly aware of their situation from an objective outside perspective. For one moment, they stop defending or protecting their addiction, stop turning blame around on those trying to help them, stop excusing and minimizing their behavior, and they realize exactly what they’re involved in. Once this moment happens, they usually develop a burning resolve to quit, because addiction feeds off a victim mentality and a refusal to take accountability. Once the lie is exposed, it is hard to maintain.
• If it is not you but rather a loved one enslaved to some destructive bondage, you can educate them and express your concern for their welfare or how they are hurting you with their behavior, but they have to make the decision to be free themselves. You cannot force or manipulate them into freedom. Be in prayer that they would have a moment of clarity.
• When you submit to bondage, you pursue temporary happiness by indulging your base instincts and maximizing your pleasure, but you don’t end up with contentment and fulfillment. Instead, you end up miserable, exhausted, in broken relationship with others, and ultimately looking for an escape. Sin only pretends to be helpful. At this point, you have at least some awareness that your bondage isn’t achieving what you initially started using it for.

There are additional aspects of spiritual bondage that most resources you may come across will either not discuss or will not put together into a complete picture:

• Temptation comes from your own evil desires, not God (James 1:13-14).
• Your bondage began with a choice to yield to such temptation, at which point you chose comfort over courage. Bondage continues as a voluntary action that reinforces your original choice, even if you desire to no longer make this choice but are instead spiritually enslaved.
• While you are spiritually enslaved, you still have agency and must take responsibility for your choices. It is not a disease (even if there’s a “genetic component,” it’s a generational curse). You can choose to stop if you access the freeing power of Christ’s redemption. You are not a victim, because a victim is not complicit in a sinful act and therefore does not need to repent. Do not let yourself be coddled or adopt a victim mentality, or else you will never be free.
• A victim mentality reinforces guilt and shame, because your guilt increases every time you sin, and feeling victimized increases the sense of shame (because shame is induced by mistreatment, which is synonymous with victimization). It can also lead to resignation and giving up, if you come to believe none of your efforts can lead to freedom.
• Guilt is justified if you are willingly engaging in evil. The proper response to this justified guilt is repentance.
• Shame is a natural response to mistreatment and cannot be simply hand-waved away. I will discuss in the next article how it can be properly dealt with.
• Some forms of spiritual bondage, like sexual immorality, are not discussed openly in Christian communities, but are instead “don’t ask, don’t tell.” Moreover, many Christians believe that repentance and conversion alone will lead automatically to an end to such behaviors. These two factors magnify the shame Christians feel in their difficulties when they try and fail to free themselves from bondage.
• When you submit to God’s healing process, the only way out of your bondage is through the painful reality and consequences of your situation. I describe it as “God performing open-heart surgery without anesthesia.” It hurts like heck, but it leaves you healed in the end. I urge you to persevere.
• If you are a Christian who has been trapped in sin for a while and don’t know how to escape (a very common situation), it’s possible that in the past you asked God for the way of escape, He called you to do something that terrified you or that you were unwilling to do (like the rich young ruler in Matthew 19:22), and you decided not to obey. At this point, you may have forgotten doing so and are now no longer receiving responses from God, because you’ve quenched the Holy Spirit (1 Thessalonians 5:19) and can’t hear Him anymore. You have therefore been spiritually “stuck” ever since He first called you to step out in faith and begin making things right. Fortunately, if you promise Him sincerely that you will do whatever He tells you to do this time and ask Him for guidance, He will oblige. However, don’t be surprised when He gives you the same instruction He gave you before. His instruction won’t change, but your response must.

Step 5: Summarize Your Bondage

Once you have the necessary information about what your bondage is, I would suggest writing down a summary of your bondage and your commitment to be free. In this summary, include what your bondage is, why it’s wrong, how you have harmed others, and how you’ve harmed yourself. Be sure to include the lies you’ve told your loved ones and the promises you’ve broken.

You should also describe what you’ve done in the past to try to quit that has failed: all the cold turkey willpower-based efforts, the endless rehabs, the attempts to structure or minimize your behavior. Write down a statement in which you recognize that none of them have ever worked and that you’re done trying them. (Note: a rehab program might still be helpful for you going forward, if you take ownership of your recovery and address the spiritual aspects of your bondage in the process).

Finally, write out the pain you feel. Pour out your frustration, anger, grief, despair, and sense of hopelessness. Dictate a solemn pledge to do whatever God tells you to do to be free and express that you are placing your absolute faith in Him to lead you to freedom.

I would not suggest sharing all the details of your summary with your spouse, as it can fracture an already damaged relationship (I will discuss coming clean in the next article). If you bring in others to help you, you can share some or all of it with them as is appropriate and helpful.

Step 6: Accept Your Situation

This step may seem a little odd, but it is still extremely important. Once you have summarized your current situation and where you’ve pledged to direct your energy to find freedom, you need to accept your situation for what it is. In other words, now that you’ve abandoned the failures of your previous path, understand where you need to head, and are following closely behind Jesus, at this moment you are where you are, and that’s OK.

This does not mean accepting yourself the way you are or the situation the way it is, but rather accepting that you are the way you are, and the situation is the way it is. Your mistakes and folly have led you to where you are, but God’s going to take you somewhere new and better. You may lose things you value in the process (especially the trust of loved ones when you come clean), and there may be harm done to yourself or others that cannot be fully healed in this life, but you’re on your way to the best outcome possible for your current starting place.

This also does not mean “loving yourself the way you are,” believing that your bondage is good, believing it’s a disease and therefore outside your control, or accepting that you’ll never quit. You are simply recognizing that you cannot force yourself into spiritual freedom, nor can you make up lost time in an instant. The only way out is through healing, and now you’re on that path. Therefore, you can breathe easy and accept yourself and your situation without condemnation.

It’s going to take what it takes to be free. It is what it is. Whatever you’ve done to quit before hasn’t worked, so you’re never going back there, because it’s not the path to freedom. You’ve made a commitment not to quit by willpower, but rather to pursue health in accordance with God’s love for you and your willingness to love Him and others and yourself accordingly. Therefore, if you follow through, you will succeed.

If you are worried about following through, ask God to give you determination and steadfast purpose. At every step in this process, when you feel overwhelmed or hopeless, pray for courage and endurance.  Remind yourself and God that you are done with your bondage and ready and willing to do whatever it takes to be rid of it. Like your savior Jesus, you must endure this trial, despising the shame of it, that you may attain the joy promised you (Hebrews 12:2), willing to suffer with Jesus that you may be glorified with Him (Romans 8:17).