A Letter To My Addiction

Dear Addiction,

Where do I begin? I cannot trivialise how much we’ve been through together. We’ve been to hell and back and I just want to put the record straight between us. You were very clever in fooling me to put my faith in you, a created thing, rather than God, the Creator Himself. In my former life we shared some seemingly good times together. In fact, at some point, we were inseparable as I felt it was impossible for anyone to like the real me without you involved. I was so shy and you made me believe that you could trust you to embolden me. What a liar you are! It was you who stole my peace away. It was you who took my confidence and led me to reply on you as a crutch. It was you who left me filled with shame and worsened my insecurities. It wasyou who laughed at me when I turned to you for solace. Worst of all, it was you who kept me from loving relationship with my Creator, who craved nothing more than to see me happy and free from your clutches. Oh how I wish I had listened to the soft voice that kept warning me about you. I was so stubborn and fixated on my need for you that I failed to see God’s hand outstretched towards me , waiting to lift me up from my mess. The rest you promised and failed to provide for me has finally been made available by God. My Father has shown me that your claim that I was worthless without you was a big fat lie. He loves me more than I could ever imagine and I curse the day that I met you! The dream you promised me turned out to be my worst nightmare but thank God that I am finally walking in His dream for me because of His son Jesus. I will now turn that passion I had for you against you as I give myself to exposing the truth to all those trapped in your web of deceit. You have become my enemy and I will fight you through Christ who strengthens me. You
might as well pack your bags and say goodbye because the weakling you once bullied and influenced with your lies is now sitting on the shoulders of a loving Giant. When I am weak, He is strong. Listen carefully to me addiction: “In Jesus name, get thee behind me”. That is truly where you belong and by God’s grace, that is where you will reside for the rest of my life. – Christian

Key Scripture: Romans 1:25

²⁵They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the  Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.

 Today’s blog post is a very serious one because it tackles an issue faced by more Christians than would care to admit. Addiction is a problem that is particularly predominant in our culture today. The bible clearly tells us that idols are constantly competing with God for our worship. In effect, addiction is the worship of created things rather than the actual Creator. Have you ever heard someone say something like: “ I can’t stop fornicating”; or “I had to take another hit because I simply could not help myself”. We’ve all heard and made statements like these albeit in different contexts but what we can observe is that the idol, which could be cigarettes for example, starts off promising to help you relax. The idol competes with God for your attention and those who fall for it miss out on the only true source of relaxation. After a while, the cigarettes or idol starts to take more and more control over your life and a single stick has progressed to social smoking. Before you know it, the idol or cigarette starts to tell you that you cannot enjoy a simple evening indoors without it and then you start smoking at home. Can you notice how the so-called freedom to smoke is actually ending up enslaving you to a destructive habit that God would not want for your life? Idols are a serious matter and are behind every single addiction. They ultimately want to lead us to our death in one way or another. It could be drugs, food, sex, money, power etc.