Sin tends to be addictive. If you don’t believe me, just try and stop falling for your greatest weakness. Some of us are addicted to gossiping about others, some of us are addicted to alcohol or pornography, and some of us are addicted to ice-cream. Join Esther Louw and Pastor Doug Batchelor in this episode of the GYC Beyond Podcast. Pastor Doug opens up about his long-term addiction with ice-cream and the lessons he learned that enabled him to finally overcome.

<p>Sin tends to be addictive. If you don’t believe me, just try and stop falling for your greatest weakness. Some of us are addicted to gossiping about others, some of us are addicted to alcohol or pornography, and some of us are addicted to ice-cream. Join Esther Louw and Pastor Doug Batchelor in this episode of the GYC Beyond Podcast. Pastor Doug opens up about his long-term addiction with ice-cream and the lessons he learned that enabled him to finally overcome.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

Shauna Chung

Lisa Topete

GYC Beyond

01- Incorporating Evangelism into Your Life

Mark Finley

02- How to Live a Consecrated Life

Sebastien Braxton

03- How to Navigate Past Brick Walls

Amy Sheppard

04- Leadership and Time Management

Gem Castor

05 - How to Have a Powerful Life of Prayer

Natasha Dysinger

Esther Louw

06 - How to Have a Vibrant Devotional Life

Justin Kim

07- How to Teach an Interesting Sabbath School Lesson

Adam Ramdin

08 - Discovering Our Christian Heritage

Anthony Bosman

09 - Why Christianity?

Moise Ratsara

10- Why You Should Be Involved in Your Local Church

Janet Page

Jerry Page

11- How to Experience Revival and Reformation

David Skau

12- How to Reach Out to Refugees and Immigrants

Neale Schofield

13- How to Use Media and Art for God

Tara Vang

14 - The Power of Sharing Your Faith

Lela Lewis

15 - How to Get Involved in Medical Missionary Work

Carl Brugger

16 - Why You Should Volunteer for GYC

Andy Im

17 - How to Overcome Temptation

Michelle Doucoumes

18 - The Heart of Ministry

Doug Batchelor

19 - How to Overcome an Ice Cream Addiction

Kyle Allen

20 - How to be a Part of Total Member Involvement

Nathaniel Justin Khoe

21 - How to Create a Social Media Ministry

Wayne Blakely

Michael Carducci

Danielle Harrison

Ronald Woolsey

22 - Coming Out Ministries: Sexual Identity & Adventism

Gary Blanchard

23 - How to Live Dangerously for God


Sin tends to be addictive. If you don't believe me, just try and stop falling for your greatest weakness. Some of us are addicted to gossiping about others. Some of us are addicted to alcohol or pornography. And some of us are addicted to ice cream.

Hi, this is Esther Loh. Joining me in this episode of the GYC Beyond podcast is Pastor Doug Batchelor from Amazing Facts Ministries. Pastor Doug opens up about his long-term addiction with ice cream and the lessons he learned that enabled him to finally overcome. Listen in on an amusing and inspiring conversation. Hi, Pastor Doug, and welcome to the GYC Beyond podcast.

We're happy to have you here today. So this morning, we're going to be talking about how to overcome an ice cream addiction. Can you tell us a little bit about how you started struggling with addiction with ice cream? Well, Lester, it goes way back, as far back as I can remember, in Southern California. They used to have these ice cream trucks that would come through our neighborhood and they would play this song.

The funny thing is the song that they played was, it's Little Brown Jug, which is actually a whiskey song and they'd have bells and all the kids would run out into the street and I still vividly remember doing everything I could to talk my grandmother out of a little change so I could get a rainbow rocket or 1 of the orange cream popsicles or something. It was a big treat, but it was just supposed to be occasional. And then, you know, when I went to live with my mother in New York City, my mom and dad divorced and I was living alone with mom, the only time we ever spent together sometimes as a treat, a couple, 3 times a week we eat ice cream, watch TV. So for me it started to represent just a really pleasant time. But then it started getting worse.

Alright, how bad did it get? Well, it's quite an odyssey and it didn't happen all at once. And there were times when I wasn't eating a lot of ice cream. In military school, I was always trying to get extra ice cream sandwiches. And living with my father, some people have a milkman.

They would deliver milk every day. Our milkman would also deliver ice cream. And I started to where I would eat a whole pint of vanilla ice cream by myself easily as a teenager Wow mix it with orange cheese. It was really good and And then it just stayed with me even after becoming a Christian. I thought oh, no, what's wrong with ice cream?

You know, I was dealing with so many other things, drugs, and I gave up drinking and smoking, and I thought ice cream. And I saw a lot of other people that were in the church doing much worse things. And I thought, well, I'm a vegetarian. And so I had just all kinds of rationalizations. And I would say, well, God's taking us to a land of milk and honey.

And so I was very happy to find out Haagen-Dazs made a milk and honey brand. I just called it Honey Vanilla. It got to where, I'm embarrassed to say, but you know it's not that I was saying if anyone eats ice cream it's a sin, but it had become an addiction for me and it was a sin. I would, living up in the hills, we're half a mile from the nearest store, have to have it almost every day. I would drive a half an hour to town, spend 4 dollars on a pint, try and race home.

I tell them to triple wrap it so it wouldn't melt, race home, and eat it. And I thought, man, I just spent like $10 on that ice cream. Oh yeah. And I realized I had a problem, but I couldn't stop. Okay, so now that you realize you had a problem, what did you do to try and stop it, and why was it hard?

Well, there was a period, and I just need to mention this, there was a period of time where I realized I had a problem, but I tried to rationalize it. And I think everybody does that with some sin or addiction. They say well it's not that bad or look at what everyone else is doing that's so much worse. And I said well you know look I'm eating all this ice cream but I'm 140 pounds. Okay.

You know so it's not hurting me. I go to the doctor and he'd say, no, your cholesterol's fine. But, you know, I knew that this is how, I had to have it every day. What really convicted me that it was a bad thing, you know I'd read in the Bible where whether you eat or drink do all to the glory of God And I read where it says their God is their belly Mm-hmm, and it's like something I had to have and anything that controls you Jesus said sin shall not have dominion over you. And it like, it controlled my schedule.

I'm embarrassed to tell you, and I've publicly confessed this already, when traveling, now this lasted, we're talking 30 years. So it's hard to condense all the different dynamics of it. I'd go to the store and I had 1 of my church members that worked in the supermarket and she'd always comment on all the ice cream in my cart and I'd try to hide from her when I would go to the market. And she always seemed to end up at the cash register. She'd go, Pastor Doug, you sure eat a lot of ice cream.

Or I'd stop for a little while, and I'd think, oh, I'm doing good. But then I'd find myself pushing my cart down the ice cream aisle. There's nothing else I needed there, but I just said, well, I'm just going to look and see if it's on sale. If it's on sale, it must be God's will for me to have it. So look, Haagen-Dazs, 2 for $5.

What a blessing. Thank you, Lord. And so you can rationalize that God is, you know, he's winking at you. But I just knew that it was bad. I would travel out of town and a secretary would say, do you need a rental car?

The meeting place is right by the airport. You can just take a shuttle. I said, no, I need a rental car. So I'd get something to eat. And I would get a rental car and The only reason I needed that rental car is so I could drive to the market and get ice cream Oh, wow, and then I thought to myself Wow Here you paid for a rental car plus you paid for the ice cream.

It's that ice cream cost you $30. Uh-huh, and I started really coming under conviction But I mean I'm talking It had to be every day for years. And at times, I started cutting back, but at times it was an entire pint every night. When I was young, half a gallon of ice cream. So I mean, I'm talking serious ice cream consumption.

So, and then I'd say, but you know, I don't do the other things, and I exercise, and I only eat 2 meals a day. And I was such a hypocrite. I mean, here I'm a vegetarian. I wouldn't even eat cheese. Okay.

And I'd brag about that. But I was sneaking off and I was a junk food junkie with ice cream every night. So I became really convicted and for a while I'd stop for a while and then I'd backslide And I noticed that I started feeling a lot better. If I could go a few days without ice cream, I didn't feel congested. My head felt better.

I wasn't clearing my throat. And then I'd backslide and I'd start again. I said, well, just once, just a treat, not a sin. But boy, as soon as you do it once, it's hard to stop. Oh yeah.

So you're at the point where you're trying to change, and you're backsliding a little bit, and then you're quitting for a couple days, or maybe a few weeks at a time. How did you finally get past this addiction? Well, it's simple and it's hard. At some point I had to say this isn't just a thing that's not good, it was a sin for me. And I needed to confess it.

And once you confess your sin to God you basically give the Holy Spirit permission to increase conviction and to give you power. Now that power must be combined with human effort. There's a great quote in Signs of the Times, February 14, 1878. It says, Divine power combined with human effort will give to all perfect and entire victory. Mm-hmm.

Every believing mind will be filled with conscious power. The language of the soul will be, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. And I kept wanting the Lord just to take it away, which is, yeah, that would be great, but it doesn't always work that way. I found that when I was being tempted, if I would stop then and pray, and then cooperate with the Lord, don't push the cart down the ice cream aisle, don't go near it. But as soon as I started to give in a little bit and look to see if it was on sale and to sit there and stare at it, then I'd fall.

And so whatever your sin is, the Bible says flee temptation. And so as soon as I made up my mind, I have to say no, and I have to say never again. Because I knew once I started, I haven't, and since I got the victory, and which has been probably 8, 10 years now, I haven't had ice cream 1 time. And the big test for me, wondering if I had the victory, came at 45, 000 feet. I had been bumped up to business class on an overseas flight, which was really nice.

Yeah. And I'm all by myself. And I ate a wonderful, they had a veggie meal for me. And I'm feeling, boy, look how blessed I am. And then they came by with the cart and they were giving out vanilla Häagen-Dazs.

You're over and I thought oh who will know I'm all by myself just once you deserve it and I said no Doug once you start again, it's downhill And so when I was able to say no at that point, I thought, praise the Lord. And now I have no temptation, it's gone. Okay, so if we could just kind of take these steps that you took and put them maybe in a list format, What was that? So the first thing that you found you needed to do was confess. You need to be honest with yourself that it's, it has dominion over you.

All right. It's a chain. Okay. It's not bringing glory to God, it's costing money and it's not good for my health. And So you have to just be honest that this is a problem that God wants you to stop.

And then what's the next step? You need to get on your knees and say, Lord, I can't do this without you. And you just confess your weakness and say, will you please help me? And then beyond that, you need to, if it's a problem like smoking, throw away your cigarettes. If it's ice cream, throw it away.

In other words, if you have anything within range that's in your gates, you know, the Bible talks about within your gates, get it out. Take the first step. The promise is, draw near to God and he'll draw near to you. So if you have any, get rid of it. All right.

And then whenever temptation comes, pray. And ask God, say, Lord, I know this isn't your will. I'm powerless without you. Use your human power and he gives you supernatural strength. Okay, so what if you're in the position where someone else listening might have an ice cream addiction and they can't stop thinking about ice cream?

And it just plays on their mind every single day until they give in. How do you get past this constant thinking over something and then wanting it? Isaiah 1 says, we cease doing evil, we learn to do good. No baby is born crying for ice cream. We learn these cravings, which means you unlearn it.

So every time you say no to a temptation, You strengthen that decision process in your brain, and the next time you say no, it gets easier, and pretty soon, it says, resist the devil, he'll flee from you. Pretty soon, it stops coming. Like, I had the same problem with smoking, you know? It was almost unbearable thinking about it, thinking about it. But I kept saying, no, no, no, no, no.

And the voice of temptation will get quieter. Until pretty soon you don't hear it anymore. All right, what about if you know that you should quit? You have all the reasons for why it's bad and it's not helping you but you actually don't want to. I didn't want to.

Sometimes you, I didn't quit smoking because I was coughing and I enjoyed it but I was convicted this was wrong. And that would probably be true with many temptations. Sin has pleasure, and some people don't want to turn away from something pleasurable. But you need to think that The pleasure of having a clean conscience before God is worth so much more that it's a choice. Okay.

Yeah. And for me, just a side note. Yeah. Is I didn't realize I was allergic to milk. And so for the first time in my life, I grew up and they were just putting milk in me since I was born I finally gave up ice cream and For the first time in my life, I started breathing like I guess I was supposed to breathe and I didn't even know what it felt Like Wow, so It's I've just felt so much better.

I went to the doctor, I'm 62 now, went to the doctor a little recently, he said, Doug, your blood works really good. And he asked me, he said, are you a vegan? I said, I am, now I really am. But it actually makes a difference in your health. So you'll always reap benefits mentally, physically when you turn away from sin.

How about the idea of like motivation? Is it always necessary to just get rid of something entirely? Can't you just have a little bit of ice cream every once in a while? Well I should probably confess at this point, everyone that's close to me knows that I won't eat ice cream, ice cream anymore. So every now and then they'll get me some rice dream frozen dessert or something like that.

And so on occasion, I will have some of that, but it's not something I do once a week. It's just an occasion. It doesn't have to hold on me. Nothing's like the real thing. I've just found that I've been able to do something like that in moderation.

I would never tell a person that, you know, having, like I said, ice cream was a sin. It was for me. Okay. Some people, shopping is not a sin, but it is for some people because they're addicted. Well, where's the line between something being an addiction and a problem in your life, and something just being a little bit out of control?

Well, if it's not bringing glory to God, if it's wasting your time, your health, your resources, then you need to give it over to him. It says, sin shall not have dominion. If it's something that reigns in your life and that you're putting it before Christ. You know, 1 of the ways you know an alcoholic is they schedule their life around their alcohol. Alcohol controls their schedule.

Ice cream used to control my schedule. If it's taking time that you know really belongs to God, He'll convict you. The Holy Spirit will show you. All right. Okay, so let's say that someone has gone through this process that you've gone through.

They've managed to get rid of their addiction to ice cream. And then someone gives them some ice cream and they have a little bit and then it all starts all over again. Is that something to be discouraged over? Can they get up and try again or is that the end of it? Mark Twain said quitting smoking is easy I've done it a hundred times and I didn't really share with you how many times I had quit eating ice cream and then I backslid.

Yeah. And then I got where I said I'm just gonna do it every other day you know you can fall off the wagon. Get back up and just keep going at it. I mean, it's like learning to walk. How many times do babies fall?

Yeah. They gotta just keep getting back up. All right. So don't get discouraged. But at some point, we wanna say, I have complete victory.

And don't make excuses for sin because the devil will always give you an excuse and a rationalization. Say, Lord, you can set me free. I want to have complete victory and he can do it for you. Okay. Well, as we close up, we just talked basically about ice cream, but it's really emblematic of a lot of bigger things that people are struggling with every single day.

What is a word of encouragement that you would give to someone who's really trying to get past an addiction and they just can't seem to make any headway at all. Greater is he that is in you that he that is in the world. You need to believe that. Don't believe that the devil is better at tempting you than Jesus is at delivering you. And you know, our little talk about ice cream today is, it's true, but it's also somewhat of an allegory for fighting against any temptation.

And, you know, the Lord's helped me with drinking, with smoking. I'm not saying I've arrived, but he can help you get the victory over whatever your struggles are, whatever it is for a person. It can give you complete victory. Thank you so much for sharing with us today and we appreciate it. Thank you, Estelle.

Thank you for joining us in this short and sweet conversation. We are grateful for Pastor Doug's participation and appreciate his time with us. To hear more episodes, don't forget to follow us on iTunes or go to gycweb.org slash beyond to find out more. You

Series

GYC Beyond

19 - How to Overcome an Ice Cream Addiction

Description

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

Other Teachings in Series

01- Incorporating Evangelism into Your Life

20m

02- How to Live a Consecrated Life

26m

03- How to Navigate Past Brick Walls

33m

04- Leadership and Time Management

24m

05 - How to Have a Powerful Life of Prayer

30m

06 - How to Have a Vibrant Devotional Life

30m

07- How to Teach an Interesting Sabbath School Lesson

20m

08 - Discovering Our Christian Heritage

21m

09 - Why Christianity?

21m

10- Why You Should Be Involved in Your Local Church

24m

11- How to Experience Revival and Reformation

30m

12- How to Reach Out to Refugees and Immigrants

29m

13- How to Use Media and Art for God

20m

14 - The Power of Sharing Your Faith

22m

15 - How to Get Involved in Medical Missionary Work

17m

16 - Why You Should Volunteer for GYC

16m

17 - How to Overcome Temptation

23m

18 - The Heart of Ministry

25m

19 - How to Overcome an Ice Cream Addiction

17m

20 - How to be a Part of Total Member Involvement

21m

21 - How to Create a Social Media Ministry

22m

22 - Coming Out Ministries: Sexual Identity & Adventism

33m

23 - How to Live Dangerously for God

32m

Sound Doctrine