As we love God and choose to focus on Christ we will notice times when other things take our focus off of him. Our affections drift off to something else. It might be projects, or food, or sports, or shows, or drugs, or status, or people, or career, or a particular self-image, or sensual pleasure, or money or a thousand other things, but it is surprisingly easy for us to transfer our focus and affections to other things. This is the same dynamic that affects those who initially hear Jesus’ message: “The seed that fell among the thorns represents others who hear God’s word, but all too quickly the message is crowded out by the worries of this life, the lure of wealth, and the desire for other things, so no fruit is produced” (Mark 4:18-19, NLT). The distractions of life can be very frustrating because our new Adam desires God but our old self leads us astray.
Destructive desires are still embedded in us. They are part of our old self or what Paul and Peter also call the “flesh”. For example, Peter exclaims: “I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul” (1 Pet. 2:11, ESV). (For Paul’s teaching see Gal. 5:16-17; 1 Tim. 2:22; Titus 2:12.) James 1:14 puts it bluntly: “But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire” (ESV). We should never doubt that our old self can rise up and derail us.
Our old self naturally harbors disordered attachments. It likes to preserve its old attachments and develop new ones. In the negative sense, an attachment is a destructive or immature belief, attitude, affection, practice or thing to which we have committed ourselves. An attachment is formed when one’s heart internally takes hold of a harmful object. In other words, our heart has a grip on something that it needs to surrender to God. Thus, an attachment is a relationship with something that is incompatible with our relationship with God.
The object of our attachment may not necessarily be sinful in itself, as Paul explains: “You say, “I am allowed to do anything”—but not everything is good for you. And even though “I am allowed to do anything,” I must not become a slave to anything” (1 Cor. 6:12, NLT). For example, watching sports is not bad in itself but if we love it more than people or God, or if it hinders healthy relationships, then it has become a disordered attachment.
The process begins when we find ourselves distracted by something else that catches our attention, then we start focusing on it, then we develop affections for it, and then we attach our heart to it. Sometimes they become idols; they become a kind of god for us. It is like falling in love. We have to fight these desires whether we like it or not. “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him” (1 John 2:15, ESV).
When love for God and others matures in us we will find that we do not have any known disordered attachments. We are able to let go of anything disordered in our lives because we are not bound to it, even if we like it. Obvious examples include money, status, physical pleasure, an occupation, or a hobby. Our goal is to reach the place in our lives where we are completely pliable in God’s hands because we love him so much that we will do his will, walk in his Spirit, even when it hurts. When it hardly hurts at all to let go of something we like then we have reached a high level of maturity.
