When overcoming addictions, oftentimes it’s not about stopping a behavior as much as it’s about developing a relationship with a living God.
It’s that relationship that will give us the positive outcome. A lot of times God speaks to us through various ways: our friends, our Christian friends, our recovery friends, His word, going to church, and being around that is vital or we can find ourselves in a situation of being unaccountable and succumb to our desires.
There’s a need to try to find joy in the mundane, because without that, boredom can lead to mistakes and slip ups. But when we’re in a relationship with God we don’t experience boredom.
The enemy would like us to believe that sitting around at a coffee shop, talking about God all day, and going to church would be boring, but it’s not. Reading books on the Bible and learning more about God to me is the most exciting thing there is.
And once we’re on our walk with God and doing our best to find joy in everything, we’re on the right path. Although that doesn’t mean it’s an easy path – there will be shortcomings and trials and it’s important to be ready for those and open to talking about them. We have to take responsibility and acknowledge that a lot of the days that we get up and go through everyday feeling the same, looking the same, and in those moments we need to find connection with God.
Whether it’s going to a meeting or meeting with a sponsor, in that decision you’ll find joy that you maybe didn’t expect to find. Or you do something that brings joy; it could be something simple and easy such as going for a walk or watching the sunset. It’s a gift of God, to experience joy in those things, and a lot of it is recognizing what you may call mundane as actually being real miracles.
Then, once we’re putting ourselves in positive situations that build our relationships with others and with God, and also finding joy in all things including the mundane, we’ll find that a positive outcome follows.
