Dear Father,
Three days ago you freed me from videogames again. With your help, I put up the PS4 controller with Your help, and later put the headset in the same drawer. I don’t know how long this will last. I pray it’s many years, but I know that if my life becomes less than I would like, I will be tempted to return to it.
I’ve wasted about two months on Warframe. It’s fun to play with friends, but they’re usually pursuing selfish goals and want you to tag along. You enabled me to be free again. I hope I don’t go back. I’m not really a better steward of my time yet, but I hope to be. I was pretty sick the past few days, aching joints, fever, chills, and a terrible headache and nausea. Oddly though, I’ve been nauseated in the mornings for the past couple weeks. Could it be game related? I don't know, but if bright lights and patterns can cause seizures, I’d be surprised if they didn’t change the operation of the brain in other ways.
So you’re reading this and thinking: This guy’s nuts. He can’t control His gaming. Plenty of people can. I can. Why listen to him?
Paul in the bible talked about how grace gave him freedom, but that freedom was not to be misused. Anything that would enslave him or hurt his relationship with God was to be avoided. Just because we can do something doesn’t mean that we should. I’m not saying that videogames are in and of themselves evil, any more than alcohol, or sex, or cigarettes are evil. Well, cigarettes will cause you health problems, alcohol can make you an alcoholic, and pursuit of sex outside of the one man one woman one time marriage covenant can lead you down a dark path.
I’ve been gaming since I was two years old. To God be the glory,I took a two year break at age 30 or 31. Then I fell off the wagon, got back on for seven months (PTL), and recently fell off again. I’m not great when I’m gaming. I forget to do things, spend less time with my animals, don’t make any art at all, and don’t write creatively. Those things, though important, won’t give you meaning enough to keep you off games. Ultimately Jesus is the only way to stay clean, and even with Jesus, you may have times in your life when you are weak.
I’m powerless over videogames, but God’s grace and His Spirit is not. Johnny Hunt, an American Indian preacher, was an alcoholic. He got saved, and never looked back. He spends his life preaching the gospel, teaching the Word of God. I wish I could never look back, but I am tempted to think of my past and how “that wasn’t so bad was it?” You had fun playing that game” I pray God grants me the grace to abstain, but even if for whatever reason it doesn’t last, I feel whole when I’m sober. I don’t feel like my faith is weak, that I have to beg God to answer my prayers. I know he doesn’t love me any more when I’m clean or any less when I’m off the wagon.
If you love videogames, don’t want to give them up, manage your life decently? You can totally ignore my perspective. But if you want to change? Want to do something that affects reality and makes your life better? Turn it over to Jesus, and find a recovery program. Maybe I need to find one.
Reader pray for me. And know, that I am praying for you. That God would take away your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh, and put a new spirit in you. This is the prayer of Ezekiel for the lost, and I pray that God would unblind your mind, open your eyes, open your ears, that you would see with your eyes, hear with your ears, and turn, and God will heal you.
If you read and are believing then I offer this prayer that my bible study hosts offered me, and suggest you pray it for the other believers in your life:
“The Lord bless and keep you, the Lord make His face shine upon You and be gracious to you, the Lord lift up his countenance upon You, and give you Peace” This is the prayer God gives Moses to pray over the children of Israel, and if you believe, the spiritual descendants of Abraham. God will save Israel from all its troubles, from the tribulation, from the unholy. Make the most of your time. Share your story and the gospel with everyone you can, because “the days are evil”
Trem