Olumide deleted the betting app for the ninth time on a Sunday night in March. He knew it was the ninth because he had started counting. He sat on the edge of his bed in the self-contained flat he rented in Ogba, held the phone in both hands and watched the little icon shake before it disappeared. Then he prayed the prayer he had prayed eight times before. “Lord, this is the last time. I am done with it. Never again.”
It had started three years earlier with a five-hundred-naira accumulator on a Premier League weekend. A colleague at the engineering firm showed him how it worked. Olumide picked five matches, won eleven thousand naira and bought suya for the whole office. It felt harmless. It felt like a hobby that paid for itself.
By the time of the ninth deletion, it was neither harmless nor a hobby. He was betting on Korean football at two in the morning and on virtual matches that lasted three minutes. He had taken loans from four different lending apps, one of which had begun sending messages to people in his contact list. The money he had promised his mother for his younger sister’s school fees had gone on a single Saturday afternoon, chasing a loss with a bigger stake, and then chasing that one. He told his mother the company was owing salaries. She believed him. That was the part he could not stop thinking about.
He was not a careless believer. He led the prayer session at his cell meeting on Thursdays. He read his Bible on the BRT to work. He was sincere every time he made his promise. And every Saturday, when the matches started and the notifications arrived with their bonus offers, he downloaded the app again.
On that ninth Sunday night, lying awake, Olumide asked himself a question he had been avoiding. If my promise was sincere the first eight times, why should a ninth sincere promise make any difference?
It is a good question. This teaching is for anyone who has asked it.
Why another promise is not enough
Most believers caught in a destructive habit have already tried the private promise. We say it in the bathroom after the drink we said we would not take. We say it at three in the morning with the laptop closed and the shame still warm. We say it to God with real tears, and we mean it. Then the circumstances that produced the habit come round again, unchanged, and the promise goes the way of the eight before it.
The problem is rarely the sincerity of the promise. The problem is that a private promise usually leaves everything else exactly where it was. The same phone sits on the same pillow. The same friends call on Friday evening. The same loneliness arrives after work. The same bank card sits in the same wallet, ready to fund the same account. The person has changed his intention, but he has not changed the road, and the road is what carries him back.
Paul knew the inner experience of wanting one thing and doing another. “For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I” (Romans 7:15). Whatever view you take of that chapter, and sincere believers read it differently, it describes the frustration of someone whose resolve keeps failing. And Paul’s answer to that frustration is not a stronger resolve. It is a person. “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 7:24-25).
That is where we must begin. Freedom from a destructive habit does not start with your willpower. It starts with what Christ has already done, and with the new life He has already given you. But the freedom that begins there has to travel. It has to reach the bedroom, the phone, the wallet, the friendships and the hours of the day when your choices are actually made. Grace that never reaches those places has not yet been allowed to do its work.
Reckon, refuse, yield
Paul’s clearest instruction for a believer facing the power of sin comes in Romans 6. He has just explained that we were united with Christ in His death and resurrection. Our old man was crucified with Him, “that henceforth we should not serve sin” (Romans 6:6). Then he turns from explanation to instruction:
Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof. Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God. For sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the law, but under grace.
Notice the order. Paul does not begin with “stop sinning.” He begins with “reckon.” The word is an accounting term. It means to count something as true because it is true, to enter it in the ledger and act on it. You are told to count yourself dead to sin and alive to God, because in Christ that is what you are. Identity comes first. You are not a gambler trying to become a Christian. You are a child of God whose old master has lost his legal claim, even though the old master still shouts from the gate.
Then comes the refusal. “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body.” The word therefore matters. Because you are alive to God, sin has no right to the throne. But notice that Paul still has to tell you not to let it reign. Sin’s rule is broken, yet it will try to behave as though it still governs, and you must refuse its orders. This is where discipline enters, and its purpose matters. You already have God’s acceptance. Discipline simply agrees with God about who now rules.
Then comes the yielding. “Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin.” The word instruments can also mean weapons or tools. Your eyes, your hands, your feet, your thumbs on a phone screen: these are tools that will be put to someone’s use. Paul says to hand them over to God deliberately, “as those that are alive from the dead.” Freedom includes stopping, and it goes further: it is a transfer of ownership, renewed in ordinary decisions.
And then the promise: “For sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the law, but under grace.” Some people read this as though grace makes sin a small matter. Paul means the opposite. Under the law, sin was stirred up and the sinner was condemned, but no power was given to break its hold. Under grace, you stand accepted, and the Spirit of life is at work in you. Grace is not the reason sin can stay. Grace is the reason sin must leave.
You are not a slave trying to earn your freedom. You are a free son learning to refuse the orders of a master who no longer owns you.
How a habit takes hold
PunchlineIt helps to understand how destructive habits work, because much of the shame believers feel comes from not understanding why their good intentions keep failing.
A habit grows through repetition. Something triggers it: a time of day, a feeling, a place, a notification. Then comes the behaviour. Then comes a reward, perhaps relief, excitement, numbness or a moment of pleasure. Each time the cycle completes, the pathway is worn a little deeper, the way a footpath appears across a field after enough people have walked it. After a while the feet find the path without the mind deciding anything.
Some habits go further and become addictions. The body and brain begin to depend on the substance or the behaviour. Larger amounts are needed for the same effect. Stopping produces real distress. The person keeps going even while he can see the damage clearly. That is not the same as having no responsibility. But it does mean that what looks from outside like simple stubbornness may involve chemistry, compulsion and fear as well as choice.
Consider some of the forms this takes among believers today.
Gambling and sports betting have spread across our cities with astonishing speed. The apps are designed by clever people to keep you playing: free bets, cash-out buttons, near misses that feel like nearly winning, live odds that change by the second. The losses can be hidden from a spouse for months. The debt can grow quietly through loan apps until the threatening messages begin.
Pornography is available in the pocket of almost every teenager and adult, at any hour, in complete privacy. Many who struggle with it first encountered it as children, long before they could choose. It trains the mind to see people as objects and teaches the body to seek relief in secret.
Alcohol is socially accepted at weddings, office parties and family gatherings, which makes it easy for dependency to hide in plain sight. Drugs, from codeine syrup to tramadol to stronger substances, have devastated young people in many parts of our country, and the line between experimenting and being hooked can be crossed faster than anyone expects.
None of these are new in principle. Three thousand years ago a wise man described the cycle of drunkenness with uncomfortable accuracy:
Who hath woe? who hath sorrow? who hath contentions? who hath babbling? who hath wounds without cause? who hath redness of eyes? They that tarry long at the wine; they that go to seek mixed wine. Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his colour in the cup, when it moveth itself aright. At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder. Thine eyes shall behold strange women, and thine heart shall utter perverse things. Yea, thou shalt be as he that lieth down in the midst of the sea, or as he that lieth upon the top of a mast. They have stricken me, shalt thou say, and I was not sick; they have beaten me, and I felt it not: when shall I awake? I will seek it yet again.
Look at the last verse. “They have stricken me, shalt thou say, and I was not sick; they have beaten me, and I felt it not: when shall I awake? I will seek it yet again.” That is the voice of addiction in every generation. The person has been hurt. He knows he has been hurt. And his first thought on waking is how to get more. Scripture is not naive about this. It understands that a habit can take a person where he never intended to go and keep him there after he wants to leave.
Understanding this should drain away contempt, both the contempt we feel for others who struggle and the contempt we feel for ourselves. It should also make us more serious, not less, about the practical steps that freedom requires.
Cutting off the hand
Jesus spoke about sin with startling force:
And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell. And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.
Jesus is not commanding self-harm. The church has always understood these words as deliberate exaggeration, the kind a teacher uses to make a point that cannot be missed. A man could pluck out his right eye and still lust with his left. The point is that whatever is feeding your sin must be dealt with decisively, even when the cost feels like losing part of yourself.
Paul says something similar in plainer language: “put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof” (Romans 13:14). To make provision is to plan ahead, to arrange supplies. Many of us fight a habit while keeping the supply lines open. We pray against drinking and keep the bottle in the cupboard. We pray against betting and keep the account funded. We pray against pornography and keep the phone beside the bed at midnight with no protection on it.
Cutting off the hand, in our time, often looks very ordinary. It may mean:
- using the self-exclusion options on betting platforms, asking your bank to block gambling transactions, and handing control of your finances to a trusted person for a season;
- removing alcohol from your home completely, changing the route you take home from work, and declining certain invitations;
- putting filtering and accountability software on every device, and charging your phone outside the bedroom;
- ending contact with the friend who supplies the drugs, or the group chat that always ends in the same place.
None of these steps earn freedom. Christ has already purchased it. These steps are how freedom is protected while new pathways are formed. They change the circumstances in which choices are made, so that the old path is not always the shortest one available.
Some believers resist this kind of discipline because they think it shows a lack of faith. Surely, they say, if God has set me free, I should not need a lock on my phone. But think of a man who has been healed of a broken leg. The healing is real, and he still walks carefully on the leg for a while. He does not run a marathon the day the cast comes off. Practical caution is not unbelief. It is wisdom cooperating with grace.
Telling the truth to another person
Here is the step most of us avoid longest. James writes:
Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.
The setting in James is a sick believer calling for the elders of the church, who pray over him and anoint him with oil. Then James widens the instruction to the whole church. “Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed.” The healing he has in mind includes the body, but it is not limited to the body. There is a healing that only comes when what was hidden is brought into the light.
Confession to God is essential, and through Christ it is always welcome. But James adds confession to one another. This is not a public announcement on Sunday morning. It is not posting your struggles on social media. It is telling the truth to a trustworthy believer, or a small group of them, who will pray for you and walk with you.
Why does this matter so much? Because destructive habits grow in secrecy. Shame says, “No one must ever know,” and as long as no one knows, the habit has the darkness it needs. David described what silence did to him: “When I kept silence, my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long” (Psalm 32:3). Hiding wears a person down from the inside.
John gives us the other side: “if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin” (1 John 1:7). Walking in the light and fellowship with one another are joined in that verse. The light is where cleansing is experienced and where companionship becomes possible.
The moment Olumide finally told someone was, he said later, the most frightening conversation of his life. It was also the moment the habit began to lose its grip. The other person had no magic words. The secret simply no longer had a room of its own.
What restoration looks like in the church
If believers are to confess to one another, the church must become a safe place to do it. Paul tells us what that safety looks like:
Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted. Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.
“If a man be overtaken in a fault.” The word suggests being caught, surprised, seized before you saw it coming. Paul is not describing the proud rebel who refuses correction. He is describing the believer who has been caught in something and needs help getting out.
“Ye which are spiritual, restore such an one.” The word restore was used for mending fishing nets and for setting a broken bone. It describes careful, patient work that puts something back into its proper condition. You do not set a bone by shouting at it. You do not mend a net by publishing its holes.
“In the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted.” The person who helps must remember that he is made of the same material. Self-righteousness disqualifies a helper. So does gossip. A brother who confides in you about his gambling should never hear about it from someone else.
“Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.” The burden here is heavy, the kind one person cannot carry alone. Christ’s law is the law of love, and love moves towards the struggling person instead of away from him.
This rules out shaming. Some churches handle destructive habits by public humiliation, by suspension that cuts the person off from the very fellowship he needs, or by preaching that makes the addicted feel that their struggle proves they were never saved. Such methods do not reduce secrecy. They multiply it. People learn to hide better.
What does good accountability look like? Think of it as a relationship, with none of the atmosphere of a police station. A good accountability partner asks specific questions rather than vague ones: not “How are you doing spiritually?” but “Did you place any bets this week?” He listens without shock. He prays. He keeps confidences, except where someone’s safety is at risk. He celebrates progress and does not treat a setback as the end of the story. And he knows his limits, which brings us to the next matter.
When skilled help is needed
NuggetSome habits can be broken with truth, discipline and the support of faithful friends. Others require more. A believer should never feel that seeking professional help is a betrayal of faith.
This is especially important with alcohol and certain drugs. A person who has been drinking heavily for a long time can become seriously ill, even dangerously so, if he stops suddenly without medical supervision. The same is true of some prescription medicines. Withdrawal is a medical matter, and a doctor should be involved. Praying for deliverance and seeing a doctor are not opposites. Luke, who wrote a large part of our New Testament, is called by Paul “the beloved physician” (Colossians 4:14). Jesus Himself said, “They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick” (Matthew 9:12), and while He was speaking of spiritual need, He used an image everyone in that culture respected.
Gambling addiction often brings debt that needs careful, practical handling, and a financial counsellor can help a family see the whole situation clearly. Pornography addiction often sits on top of loneliness, past trauma or early exposure, and a trained Christian counsellor can help a person understand what the habit has been doing for him. Many destructive habits are tangled up with depression or anxiety, and treating those conditions can remove much of the pressure driving the behaviour.
A word of caution is needed here. Some places that promise deliverance from addiction treat people with cruelty: chaining them, starving them, beating them in the name of casting out spirits. That is not the way of Christ, and families should never place a loved one anywhere that does not treat him with dignity. Look for care that is humane, qualified and honest about what it offers. Good Christian rehabilitation programmes exist, and good medical care can work alongside the prayers and pastoral support of the church.
Skilled help does not replace the gospel. The man in recovery still needs to know that he is loved, forgiven and alive to God. But the gospel never asked us to ignore the body God made, or the knowledge He has allowed people to gain about how it works.
Fleeing together
Paul wrote to his young colleague Timothy:
Flee also youthful lusts: but follow righteousness, faith, charity, peace, with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart.
“Flee also youthful lusts.” Some temptations are not meant to be fought standing still. They are meant to be run from, as Joseph ran from Potiphar’s wife, leaving his garment behind. When the danger is real, flight is simple good sense.
But notice the second half of the verse. “Follow righteousness, faith, charity, peace, with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart.” Timothy was not to flee alone. He was to run towards something, and in company. Freedom from a destructive habit is rarely a solo journey. It happens among people who call on the Lord together.
What about the times you fall again? Most people breaking a long-standing habit stumble along the way. A lapse is painful, and it should be taken seriously. But it does not cancel your standing in Christ, and it does not mean the whole effort has failed. “For a just man falleth seven times, and riseth up again” (Proverbs 24:16). The righteous man in that proverb is not the one who never falls. He is the one who gets up. When you fall, tell your accountability partner quickly, return to the Father without hiding, look honestly at what led to the fall, and adjust your protections. Then keep walking. “He which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:6).
Olumide did not delete the app a tenth time. Instead, on the Thursday after that sleepless Sunday, he stayed behind after cell meeting and asked to speak with the cell leader, a quiet retired customs officer who always came with a flask of tea.
He told him everything. The three years. The loan apps. The school fees. The lie to his mother. He expected a lecture. The older man listened without interrupting, then poured him a cup of tea and said, “Thank you for telling me. Now let us make a plan.”
The plan was not dramatic. Olumide registered for self-exclusion on every betting platform he had used. He went to his bank and asked them to block gambling payments on his card. For six months he gave his cell leader read-only access to his bank statements. He started meeting with a counsellor recommended by the church, who helped him see how much of his betting had begun on lonely evenings. He joined the church’s Saturday football team, which met at exactly the hour he used to place his weekend bets.
Hardest of all, he called his mother and told her the truth. She was quiet for a long time. Then she said, “I am disappointed, my son. But I am glad you told me.” He set up a repayment plan, and over eleven months he paid back every naira of his sister’s fees.
He did stumble once, in the fourth month, on a night when the loneliness came back hard. He placed two bets on a borrowed phone. The next morning he called the cell leader before work. “I fell last night.” The older man said, “Then we look at what happened, and we keep going.”
A year later, Olumide was asked to share his story at a men’s fellowship. He ended with the question he had asked himself that Sunday night. “I used to think the problem was that my promise was not sincere enough. It was sincere every time. The problem was that I was making it alone, in the dark, and changing nothing else. Christ had already set me free. I just had to let that freedom reach my phone, my bank card and my Saturday afternoons. And I had to let somebody else help me carry it.”
PunchlineYour freedom has already been purchased. Let it reach the places where your choices are made.
Teaching Companion
For Reflection
- Is there a destructive pattern in your life that you have tried to break only through private promises? What has kept you from involving anyone else?
- What does it mean for you, practically, to “reckon” yourself dead to sin and alive to God in the area you struggle with?
- What supply lines are you keeping open, and what would it look like to cut them this week?
- Who is one trustworthy believer you could speak to honestly? If no one comes to mind, who could help you find such a person?
- Does your struggle involve anything (physical dependence, debt, trauma, depression) that requires skilled help? What step could you take towards it?
This Week
Write down, on one sheet of paper, the habit you most want to be free from, the times and places it usually happens, and the supply lines that make it easy. Beside each, write one practical change you will make this week. Then take that sheet to one trustworthy believer, read it aloud, and ask them to pray with you and to check in with you on the same day next week. If your situation involves alcohol or drug dependence, make an appointment with a doctor before you change anything about your use.
A Prayer
Father, thank You that through Jesus Christ I am dead to sin and alive to You, and that sin shall not have dominion over me because I am under grace. I confess that I have tried to fight this habit alone and in secret, and I have kept the supply lines open. Today I bring it into the light. Give me courage to tell the truth to someone I can trust, wisdom to change the circumstances that feed this pattern, and humility to receive skilled help where I need it. When I fall, teach me to rise quickly and return to You without hiding. I yield my eyes, my hands, my time and my money to You as instruments of righteousness. Finish the good work You have begun in me. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Truth received brings freedom. Truth believed establishes the heart.
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version. · Illustrations using first names only are composites unless stated otherwise.