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WHAT IS AN ADDICTION?
L
iving with an addiction is like walking around every day
with an iron ball and chain shackled to your leg. It goes
with you everywhere, weighs you down, keeps you from reaching
your full potential, and controls your life. Every thought, action,
and emotion can be dependent on this burden that you are
dragging around. It could be drugs, alcohol, tobacco-anything
that is consuming your life and impairing your ability to make
rational decisions.
When you are only concerned about getting your needs met,
you will find yourselfliving a miserable life of bondage. Galatians
5:19-21 (MSG) describes what this often looks like:
It is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get
your own way all the time: repetitive, loveless, cheap sex; a
stinking accumulation
of mental and emotional garbage;
frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness; trinket gods; magicshow religion; paranoid
loneliness; cutthroat competition;
all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied
wants; a brutal temper;
an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives; small-minded and lopsided pursuits; the vicious
habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled
and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community.
I could go on. This isn't the first time I have warned you, you
know.
Ifyou
use your freedom this way, you witl not inherit
Gods kingdom.