The other day I was reading in McDonalds and a kid started screaming at his Mom. I rolled my eyes and felt like an idiot for picking the dumbest place ever to try to get away from distractions. The kid was being a real jerk about things. Apparently one happy meal toy wasn’t near enough of a stimulus for him. The toy in meal two had become a necessity; he was freaking out about needing someone to fight, and I was getting excited about granting his wish. To the kid’s as well as my own chagrin, his Mom took on his challenge and must have proved an intimidating adversary. Their bout took place in the women’s restroom, lasted exactly one minute, and resulted in the child’s very unhappy finishing of one happy meal.

I know it seems odd, but I sort of envied the little guy’s position at that moment. His mother was saving him from taking on the fast-food ideology of life. In America there’s this constant enticement to live a life that’s cheap, gratifies instantly, and gets thrown away no sooner than it arrives. It’s easy to step through the golden arches of self, and then never even think about looking for an exit. The enviable thing about the kid is that he has someone to find an exit for him. His mom can correct him when he isn’t acting right.

For much of my adult life, I did whatever I pleased, and a great deal of it has been damaging. I wasn’t accountable to anyone. I hid the results and the closet of my mind and heart began collecting an impressive array of skeletons. A couple years ago that began to change. I found a bible verse in James that said if you confess your sin to one another you’ll be healed. At first, there was a very scary feeling that came with telling my friends about the problems I had. The truth is my friends already knew I had problems before I came clean with them. Even though they didn’t necessarily know why I was acting weird at times, they were seeing the weirdness.

So I began confessing everything. I told my friends that I had anxiety attacks when I was around lots of people. Even though it seems like a contradiction, I also told them about how I had uncontrollable feelings of superiority towards people. Then I started getting down to the real dark stuff. I told them that sometimes I woke up with a compelling desire to go rent soft-core porn, get some booze, and get drunk while watching it. I confessed that, at times, I got very depressed and heard voices that told me I was worthless as an individual, and sometimes late at night I had suicidal thoughts. The list goes on. I confessed the ears off of my friends, but now my life is much different. I still get weird thoughts, but when my heart moves off toward destitution and destruction, I find one of my friends and tell them what’s going on. Confession creates discipline and it’s the quickest way to exit the golden arches of self.

There are probably many of you thinking right now, “Wait a second, what does wanting a second happy-meal toy have anything to do with getting drunk, watching porn, and wanting to kill yourself?� The answer is that we have to learn how to say no to ungodliness, and it would be much better to learn to say no to relatively harmless stuff, and build discipline into life early on instead of nearly wrecking the whole thing later.

A few months ago I listened to a great message on fasting. The speaker said that fasting from food is powerful because it is right at the base of our needs as individuals. It goes back to Maslow’s hierarchy, and how we fill the most basic desires first, and then as those get taken care of we move on to other things. Right at the top is our desire to be loved. It makes sense then that Jesus said that getting his life is like eating bread or drinking water. He takes care of the whole spectrum of our needs.

The whole deal with fasting though, is that through it, the battle over inner cravings is changed into a battle about eating food. In this battle, the stakes aren’t so bad. Learning how to abstain from eating is better than learning how to withhold a drinking problem or a sex problem. If you mess up with food, you know that you don’t have self-discipline, but at least you havn’t messed up your life as well.

The speaker on the message about fasting was Ted Haggard. I listened to the message a month before his scandal hit the news, and his words really helped out my own struggles. I placed boundaries in my life and developed self-control. I was really sad when I learned about his fall, because he hadn’t found victory in his own life. In a letter he wrote to his church he said that his problems became worse when he stopped confessing the sin that was in his heart to the people around him.

Please take this message to heart. Don’t ruin your life because you’re scared of what will happen when you tell people about the darkness you carry around. The best time to begin the process of healing and recovery is right now. Jesus is always ready to forgive and accept us. He wants to replace the heaviness with his light burden. Find someone who will listen to you and, like the child’s mother, help you stop.

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