Many prodigals are addicted to gaming, and their pray-ers see that gaming:

• Wastes time.
• Hinders godly pursuits and the fulfilling of purpose and calling.
• Wastes life.
• Keeps a person from participating in real life.
• Limits time in person with family and friends.
• Is dark, evil, a snaky place.
• Unhealthy.
• Substitutes real friends with online-only friends.

Their concerns are valid. It is an addiction just like any other stronghold.

While gaming wasn’t even invented while the Bible was being written, the principles surely are there. Here are a few:

• “Turn away my eyes from looking at worthless things, And revive me in Your way” (Psalm 119:37 NKJV).
• “He who walks righteously and speaks uprightly, … Who stops his ears from hearing of bloodshed, And shuts his eyes from seeing evil: He will dwell on high; His place of defense will be the fortress of rocks; Bread will be given him, His water will be sure” (Isaiah 33:15-16).
• “And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them. For it is shameful even to speak of those things which are done by them in secret” (Ephesians 5:11–12).
• “I will set nothing wicked before my eyes” (Psalms 101:3).
• “[H]aving their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart” (Ephesians 4:18).
• “[W]hose minds the god of this age has blinded, who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine on them” (2 Corinthians 4:4).
• “[N]or give place to the devil” (Ephesians 4:27).
• “You who love the LORD, hate evil!” (Psalm 97:10).

The Bible even puts an exclamation point at the end of the last one!

The Bible also gives many verses we can use to pray against gaming:

• “Blessed is the man Who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, Nor stands in the path of sinners, Nor sits in the seat of the scornful; But his delight is in the law of the Lord, And in His law he meditates day and night” (Psalm 1:1-2). I like to pray the opposite of this, too, that they walk instead in the counsel of the godly, stand in the way of the righteous, and sit in the seat of the joyful.
• “‘I now send you, to open their eyes, in order to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who are sanctified by faith in Me’” (Acts 26:17-18).
• “‘I will bring the blind by a way they did not know; I will lead them in paths they have not known. I will make darkness light before them, And crooked places straight. These things I will do for them, And not forsake them” (Isaiah 42:16).
• “that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that you may know what is the hope of His calling” (Ephesians 1:17-18).
• “He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love” (Colossians 1:13).
• “For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light” (Ephesians 5:8).

There are so many other verses: verses of salvation, sanctification, freedom, truth, purpose, calling.

Jesus tells us in John 10:10: “The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.” He is our hope for their freedom! What a hope!