Addicted: devoted or given up to a practice or habit or to something
psychologically or physically habit-forming.

 

What happened
was this: People knew God perfectly well, but when they didn’t treat
him like God, refusing to worship him, they trivialized themselves
into silliness and confusion so that there was neither sense nor
direction left in their lives
. They pretended to know it all, but
were illiterate regarding life. They traded the glory of God who
holds the whole world in his hands for cheap figurines you can buy at
any roadside stand.

So
God said, in effect, ‘If that’s what you want, that’s what you get.’
It wasn’t long before they were living in a pigpen, smeared with
filth, filthy inside and out. And all this because they traded the
true God for a fake god, and worshiped the god they made instead
of the God who made them
—the God we bless, the God who blesses
us. Oh, yes!

Worse
followed. Refusing to know God, they soon didn’t know how to be
human either
—women didn’t know how to be women, men didn’t know
how to be men. Sexually confused, they abused and defiled one
another, women with women, men with men—all lust, no love. And then
they paid for it, oh, how they paid for it—emptied of God and love,
godless and loveless wretches.”—Romans 1:22-27 (Message)

 

I admire
addicts. In a world where everybody is waiting for some bline, random
disaster, or some sudden disease, the addict has the comfort of
knowing what will most likely wait for him down the road. He’s taken
some control over his ultimate fate, and his addiction keeps the
cause of death from being a total surprise.”—
Chuck
Palahniuk

Just cause you
got the monkey off your back doesn’t mean the circus has left
town.”—George Carlin

 

Verse
One
:

 

It’s
like you’re a drug
It’s like you’re a demon I can’t
face down
It’s like I’m stuck
It’s like I’m running from you
all the time
And I know I let you have all the power
It’s
like the only company I seek is misery all around
It’s like
you’re a leech
Sucking
the life from me

It’s like I can’t
breathe

Without you inside of me
And I know I let you have
all the power
And I realize I’m never gonna quit you over time

 

Chorus:

 

It’s
like I can’t breathe
It’s like I can’t see anything
Nothing but
you
I’m addicted to you
It’s like I can’t
think

Without you interrupting me
In my thoughts
In my
dreams
You’ve taken over me
It’s like I’m not me
It’s
like I’m not me

 

Verse
Two
:

 

It’s
like I’m lost
It’s like I’m giving up slowly
It’s
like you’re a ghost that’s haunting me
Leave me alone
And
I know these voices in my head
Are mine alone
And I know
I’ll never change my ways

If I don’t give you up now

 

Bridge:

 

I’m
hooked on you
I need a fix
I can’t take it
Just one more
hit
I promise I can deal with it
I’ll handle it, quit it
Just
one more time
Then that’s it
Just a little bit more to get me
through this
I’m hooked on you
I need a fix
I can’t take
it
Just one more hit
I promise I can deal with it
I’ll
handle it, quit it
Just one more time
Then that’s it
Just
a little bit more to get me through this

 

This
is a song from Kelly Clarkson’s first CD, “Breakaway”. It’s
entitled, “Addicted” and if you want to actually listen to it,
here’s the You Tube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HrDTu-vVV8.

 

When
I tell you that this song has been ministering (yes, ministering)
to me for the past couple of days, I ain’t never lied! I have always
been a fan of Kelly’s first CD, and even this song, but there’s
something about getting a revelation when you’re really ready to
receive it
; no longer are you entertained, but moved; not only
moved, but moved to change. In January, a woman told me that my
promise scripture for this year would be Psalm 126 and more
specifically, verse 5: “Those
who sow in tears shall reap in joy
.” In one of my
birthday cards this past year, a friend of mine wrote Proverbs 29:18
(NKJV): “Where there is no revelation, the people cast off restraint.” In this season of my life
(Ecclesiastes 3), these two verses now hold an entirely different
meaning to my human trinity (mind, body, spirit).

 

Family,
no matter where you are in your life, make it a point to always
remain humble (not proud or arrogant; modest), even if that means
submitting to whatever God has to do to humble you. Proverbs 10:17
says that God hears the desire of the humble and prepares their heart and causes their ears to hear. Over 11 years ago,
I wrote a poem entitled, “A Letter to an Ex-Boyfriend”. In it,
there’s two lines that pertain to today’s message:

 

God
promised to give me the desires of my heart, not the aid to my
addiction.”

 

And
now I stand here bonded to something God never gave me, I simply
took.”

 

(Bookmark
those.)

 

A
couple of days ago, I was given the honor of speaking at a women’s
monthly meeting in Memphis. After sharing the message God gave me,
“There is no expiration date on sowing and reaping”, and sharing
how certain things I did years ago I am still dealing with even now
(Galatians 6:7-8), and how one word in Genesis 2:22 has
totally changed my life as a single woman (“Then
the rib which the Lord God had taken from man He made into a woman,
and He
brought [to
carry, convey, lead, or cause to go along to another place; to cause
to come to or toward oneself; attract; to cause to come into a
particular position, state, or effect; to cause to appear or occur in
the mind; evoke or recall ]
her to the man.”), afterwards, I found myself listening
to countless stories from women about the relationships they were in
with the men that they “loved”.

 

Sadly,
only one was a happy and seemingly healthy tale. All of the rest
were about feeling used, confused, abused; about how as great as the
sex may seem or the attention may be, there was still a deep sense of
instability and loneliness; about how while they know God says one
thing about who they are (“Yet in all these things we are more
than
conquerors through Him who loved us.”–Romans 8:37), the relationship was
causing them to do/be/believe something entirely different; that the
kind of “lovin’” they were getting was actually leaving them
drained, disillusioned, depleted…dead.

 

I
gotta wonder, I gotta ask, I gotta pray: Is that a sign of love or the
symptoms of an addiction?

 

When
it comes to the healing from my own past and the recollection of most
of my own relationships, this is the prayer I prayed a few days ago.
God’s answer was in the form of Kelly Clarkson’s song (that’s why we
have to be careful about limiting the sources of where we can receive
wisdom). The Bible says that the Enemy comes to steal, kill and
destroy (John 10:10), right? It also says that the Enemy is the
father (a person who has originated or established something) of lies
(John 8:44). Actually John says a bit more than that:

 

He
was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth,
because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks
from his own resources
, for he is a liar and the father of it.”—John 8:44 (NKJV)

 

He
was a killer from the very start. He couldn’t stand the truth because
there wasn’t a shred of truth in him. When the Liar speaks, he
makes it up out of his lying nature
and fills the world with
lies.”—John 8:44 (Message)

 

John
8:32 says that when we know the truth, it makes us free. I
Corinthians 13 (AMP) clearly defines the truth, the freedom of
real love:

 

Love endures long and is patient and kind; love never
is envious
nor boils over with jealousy, is not
boastful
or vainglorious, does not display itself
haughtily.
It is not conceited (arrogant and inflated
with pride); it is not rude (unmannerly) and does not act
unbecomingly
. Love (God’s love in us) does not insist on its
own rights or its own wa
y, for it is not self-seeking; it
is not touchy or fretful or resentful; it takes
no account of the evil done to it
[it pays no attention to a
suffered wrong]. It does not rejoice at injustice and
unrighteousness
, but rejoices when right and truth prevail.
Love bears up under anything and everything that comes, is
ever ready to believe the best of every person, its hopes
are fadeless under all circumstances
, and it endures
everything
[without weakening]. Love never fails [never
fades out or becomes obsolete or comes to an end].”

When
it comes to the priority list of loving, Luke 10:27 (NKJV) tells us
this:

 

“‘You
shall
love the
Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your
strength, and with all your mind,’ and ‘your
neighbor as yourself.’”

 

Off
top, because he is so full of hate, the Enemy is gonna try and keep
us from loving God, ourselves and then our neighbor. And,
because he knows that we are created in the image of God (Genesis
1:26.27)—something he is very jealous of, by the way—he knows
that loving and worshiping are naturally apart of who we are. In
other words, if we don’t love God, we will love something. If
we don’t worship God, we will worship something. However,
because the Enemy also knows that if we walk in the Spirit, we will
not fulfill the lust of the flesh (Galatians 5:16) and that he who
sows to the Spirit will reap everlasting life (Galatians 6:8), he’s
fully aware that he has to find a way to counterfeit the blessings of
the Spirit. A thief is someone who takes what you have, right? An
abductor is a form of a thief. When you think about his tactics,
rarely does he simply kidnap a child. Usually he will use something
to lure them into his trap: candy, money, the promise of a toy.
Then, once he has them, he takes advantage of them. Where do you
think he (or she) got that method from? His (or her) father (the
Enemy).

 

One
of the main tools that he uses is manipulation. Manipulation is a
form of lying, and the thing about a lie is that it’s main motive is
to deceive:

 

Lie:
a false statement made with deliberate intent to deceive; an
intentional untruth; a falsehood; something intended or serving to
convey a false impression; imposture; contradict; to convey a false
image or impression; a statement that deviates from or perverts
the truth
.

 

Even
if it’s got to use some element of the truth to do it:

 

Truth:
the true or actual state of a matter; a verified or indisputable
fact, proposition, principle, or the like; fidelity to an original
or standard
.

The
thing that gets a lot of people caught up, confused, BOUND up in
unhealthy relationships is that while their relationship is based on
a lie (just because you may not know it or want to admit it, that
doesn’t make it any less true), to get them hooked, there is usually
some truth within it. This is how many people have read 1Corinthians
13 and then been tricked into believing that what they were in was a
reflection of it:

 

Sure
he treats me like crap, but the Bible says to not be self-seeking.”

 

Sure
she drains me, but the Bible says I am to bear up anything.”

 

Sure
all the signs point to the fact that I am being used and abused, but
the Bible says that love never fails.”

 

What’s
one of the definitions of a lie? “To pervert the truth”, right?
One definition of “pervert” is to “to turn to an improper use;
to misapply”. How many of us are improperly using or misapplying
love in our relationships with God, ourselves and others?

 

I
John 4:16 tells us that God is love and that he who abides in love,
God is in him. Christ said that if we keep his commandments, we will
abide in his love. When it comes to romantic relationships, a lot of
times we want to reference Exodus 20:14 (“Thou shalt not commit
adultery”) as the main way we can show that we love God and that
the love we are in is healthy. Oh, but I venture to say that if we
honored the first commandment, “Thou shalt have no other gods
before me”, the rest would come automatically. See, the thing is,
the only way that we can love in a godly way is if we have God in
us in the first place
:

 

But
the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of
God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because
they are spiritually discerned.”—I Corinthians 2:14 (NKJV)

 

Did
you know one definition of “natural” is “unthinking; prompted
by (or as if by) instinct”?

 

Romans
3:23 says that we all have sinned. I John 1:10 reminds us that if we
say otherwise, we make God a liar and the Word is not in us. John
1:1 states that in the beginning was the Word and the Word was God.
Psalm 33:4 says that the Word of the Lord is right and all his work
is done IN TRUTH. Psalm 18:30 says that God’s Word is perfect, his
Word is proven, and he is a shield to all who trust him.

 

When
we succumb to “the natural man”, we follow the
natural
instinct
to do just about any and everything outside of God’s will. The
natural man encourages us to love in a way that is unlike I
Corinthians 13. It doesn’t want to wait or be kind. It finds itself
jealous and rude. It insists on things going the way it wants to go
irregardless of the outcome. Why? Because the natural man also tends
to do things without thinking the steps all the way through. To do a
relationship God’s way is foolishness to him, although (catch this)
because we are made of both flesh and spirit, without making a solid
commitment to one side or the other (Revelation 3:16),
we
often find ourselves wavering somewhere in between God’s truth and
our instincts
(a natural or innate
impulse, inclination, or tendency). One day our love seems godly and
one day it doesn’t.

 

Why
do you think Christ said that we should love God with ALL OF OUR
HEART? He knows that our hearts are deceitful (Jeremiah 17;9). He
knows that following our own instincts will, more times than not, get
us into a heap of trouble. He knows that what “feels right” in
the flesh can bring forth death to our spirits. He knows that
without his direction (Proverbs 3:6), drama is not too far from us
(James 3:16) and we can find ourselves lost, while confusing (I
Corinthians 14:33) love with addiction.

 

OK,
now let’s look back at Kelly’s song lyrics. She describes her
relationship as being the following things:

 

Like
a
DRUG (a chemical
substance, such as a narcotic or hallucinogen, that affects the
central nervous system, causing changes in behavior and often
addiction)

 

Like
a
DEMON (a
persistently tormenting person, force, or passion)

 

Like
something that has all of her
POWER (ability to do or act; capability of doing or accomplishing
something)

 

Like
something that has her in
MISERY (great mental or emotional distress; extreme unhappiness)

 

Like
a
LEECH (a person who
clings to another for personal gain, esp. without giving anything in
return, and usually with the implication or effect of exhausting the
other’s resources; parasite)

 

Like
something that takes away her ability to
BREATHE (to live; exist)

 

Like
something that on her own, she can’t
QUIT (to
stop, cease, or discontinue; to release one’s hold of)

 

Like
something that’s got her
LOST (not used to good purpose, as opportunities, time, or labor; wasted)

 

Like
something that’s making her want to give up
SLOWLY (taking or requiring a comparatively long time for completion)

 

Like
a
GHOST (the soul of
a dead person, a disembodied spirit imagined, usually as a vague,
shadowy or evanescent form, as wandering among or haunting living
persons) that’s got her
HAUNTED (preoccupied, as with an emotion, memory, or idea; obsessed;
disturbed; distressed; worried)

 

Like
something that’s keeping her from making a necessary
CHANGE (to make the form, nature, content, future course, etc., of
[something] different from what it is or from what it would be if
left alone)

 

Like
something that’s got her
HOOKED (slavishly
interested in, devoted to, or obsessed with)

 

But
more than anything, like something that’s taken her out of herself:

 

It’s
like I’m not me.”

 

And,
she has to rely on it just to exist:

 

Just
a little bit more to get me through this.”

 

What
got her this way? From a spiritual perspective, a lot of it has to do
with the lead scripture for today. Again, when we don’t worship
(
adoring reverence or regard) God, we will worship something…or someone. I love how the Message
Bible puts it. When we don’t worship God, we will create a god to
worship (sounds a lot like the Israelites—Exodus 32), but the
really crazy thing is when we don’t honor our Creator, a consequence
is that we find ourselves losing a sense of our own identity. (After
all, we are made in his image…take your eyes off the image and you
find yourself having an identity crisis—James 1:22-24)

 

It
was many (many, many) years before I understood how loving in the
natural way could cause me to lose myself. When you put a man (or
woman) before God, you are putting someone just as sinful, just as
lost, just as sick (without God) as you are above God and,
oftentimes, yourself. Only God knows the end from the beginning
(Revelation 1:8) and only he knows what he has prepared for you (I
Corinthians 2:9). Man can make no guarantees.

 

Something
that I have shared with several people is that, as a result of being
abstinent for some time now, I am figuring out who SHELLIE really and
truly is. When you are always caught up in a relationship, you tend
to use that as the gage for your life (whether you realize it or
not). Their vision alters your vision. Their opinion highly
influences yours. Their needs (especially when it comes to women)
tend to take precedence over the ones that you have. Soon you find
yourself not being yourself. (Why do you think you need God’s
covering when you’re married? So that he can keep that in check—I
Corinthians 7:34)

 

On
your own, your instincts tell you that you are doing it in the name
of “love”, but in this season of making God a top priority, do
you know what I realized? Love doesn’t stand on it’s own. It has
other attributes to support it:


But
the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering,
kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against
such there is no law.”—Galatians 5:22-23 (NKJV)

 

Do
you see how it doesn’t say the
fruits of the Spirit? In the Spirit, where there is love, other things come
as a part of the package deal: joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness,
goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. What does I
Corinthians 2:14 say again? That the natural man cannot receive the
things of the Spirit. This scripture says that
all
of these qualities
come from directly the Spirit. You can’t really love and not have
peace or joy. Once you know this, Galatians 3:3 calls it foolishness
to come to this revelation and then still try and succeed in the
flesh.

 

Shellie,
love is not hard. Trying to love in the flesh is.

 

Thanks,
Holy Spirit. Something I have come to realize and over time, am
learning to live out and accept, is that some things we make harder
than they have to be: romantic relationships (and even healing from
them) is one of them. It was a huge wake-up call for me once I
received the fact that wherever love, TRUE LOVE is, peace is not too
far behind. Zechariah 8:19 tells us to love truth and
peace.
Romans 12:18 urges that as much as possible and it depends on you,
to be at
peace with all men. 2 Corinthians 13:11 says, Become
complete. Be of good comfort, be of one mind, live in
peace;
and the God of love and peace will be with you
.” I
Thessalonians 5:13 admonishes us to be at
peace among ourselves. 2 Timothy 2:22 tells us to flee youthful lusts and
instead, pursue righteousness, faith, love and
peace.
Jude 1:2 urges mercy,
peace and love be multiplied to us. Do you know what peace is?

 

Peace:
freedom of the mind from annoyance, distraction, anxiety, an
obsession, etc.; tranquility; serenity.

 

This
means that as you love (in the overall sense because after all we all
fall short from time to time), you should be free from annoyance,
distraction, anxiety. Love shouldn’t be an obsession for you.

 

Now
ask a recovered substance abuser how much “peace” they were in
while they were addicted? We can no longer fall for the lie that
one, we can love WELL in the flesh and two, love is the only thing
that comprises a healthy relationship. If you love and are not
gentle, you are not fully loving. If you love, but have no
self-control, you are not fully loving. If you love and have no
sense of peace, you are not fully loving. If you love and are not
faithful (to God, you or someone else AND IN THAT ORDER), you are not
fully loving. To be “faithful” is to be true to one’s word, yes,
but it’s also to be reliable, loyal, steady in allegiance and
affection. It is to be constant.

 

A
crazy (in a good way) thing happens when you accept this reality
(Ecclesiastes 7:18—Message). One, you find yourself wanting to
break your addiction to any person, place, thing or idea just as soon
as possible (referencing the 12 steps for alcoholics may be a good
place to start: www.al-anon.alateen.org/steps.html).
Two, you find yourself wanting to spend more time with your Creator
than with his creatures so that you can “sober up”. And three,
you discover that time alone is a good thing. After all, how can you
really love your neighbor when you don’t have a clue how to love
yourself?

 

As
we head into another week, ask God to reveal to you what side of the
tracks you’re on. Can you really call what you’re in “love” or
do you show the full signs of being an addict?

 

As
for me, when I’m not sure, I ask, “Is this person helping me be a
better me or a worse me?”

 

And
then, I listen to Kelly’s song as a gut check. When the song brings
a name to mind and then I feel like I want to throw up…therein lies
my answer. After all, where God is, love AND peace are there. Where
God is not, envy and every self-seeking thing exists (James
3:16)…including my addictions—and death. (James 5:16), something
God nor love wants any part of (John 10:10)

 

Thank
you, God for still honoring what you said 11 years ago: that you
would give me the desires of my heart not the aid to my addiction and
that if I let you, you would free me from what I took that you never
gave so that I could have what you really wanted me to receive in the
first place.

 

Only
a sobriety can reveal this. (Matthew 16:17) Praise the Lord for
grace and mercy…and sobriety—
finally.
(Jeremiah 29:11) 

Love
constantly gives. Addictions constantly take. Now I know and now
that I know, I can start to really live…and love—freely.

 

©Shellie
R. Warren/2008