Have you ever been addicted to something? While some think that drugs and alcohol are the main things we can be addicted too, James Rubart says that we all have addictions or idols that rule us.
One spring a friend of Jim’s gave him a book titled Addiction and Grace. Jim’s first reaction was probably the same one most of us would have had.
“I thought well, that’s not for me because to me addiction is heroin, or alcohol, or you’re hooked on porn or something like that.”
The book had given it to Jim as a resources to help him understand the men he would be ministering too. However, he soon realized that it applied to him as well.
“I start reading this book and I realize that I’m addicted to so many things. I’m addicted to email. I get up on the first thing in the morning and I check my e-mail, and see what’s going on there. Maybe you’re addicted Facebook. Maybe you’re addicted to your kids. Maybe you’re addicted to your spouse, there are so many things.”
How do we know if something is an addiction or idol?
“In other words, is there something we go to for life other than this knowledge that we have this Abba, this Daddy, this father who loves us so in comprehensibly. When we get our life from that, then the storms of life become minor because we know who we are in Christ.”
God loves us so much that He won’t let our addictions fill us the way only He can.
“He is going to make us face the truth that if we put our life into anything other than him first, it’s losing.”
Learning to rely on God instead of our idols and addictions doesn’t happen overnight. If we fall back into relying on something other than God, it doesn’t mean we’ve failed. God’s grace covers us.
James Rubart is a novelist, speaker, and consultant.
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