NorthStar Community Daily Devotional

June 6

Scripture focus: So, my friends, this is something like what has taken place with you. When Christ died he took that entire rule-dominated way of life down with him and left it in the tomb, leaving you free to "marry" a resurrection life and bear "offspring" of faith for God. For as long as we lived that old way of life, doing whatever we felt we could get away with, sin was calling most of the shots as the old law code hemmed us in. And this made us all the more rebellious. In the end, all we had to show for it was miscarriages and stillbirths. But now that we're no longer shackled to that domineering mate of sin, and out from under all those oppressive regulations and fine print, we're free to live a new life in the freedom of God. Romans 7:4-6 The Message

The problem with addiction is that it doesn’t satisfy. C. S. Lewis said, "If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world." That’s a great quote.

But sometimes, when we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, we must accept the fact that we’ve messed up the pleasure center of our brain by behaving addictively. (See our video on the physiology of addiction at www.northstarcommunity.com/special for a more detailed explanation.)

When we get to this point, we begin to get a clue that we must change, stop, increase our commitment to self-discipline, etc. But the crafty, addicted brain will try to talk us out of this perspective. Here are some common ways of thinking that might indicate we’re at the end of our rope with an addiction:

* I need to stop, but now is not a good time.
* I will stop, but not right now. I’m going to do more research and figure out how to stop, then I’ll begin stopping.
* I’ll wait to stop until conditions are more favorable. No need starting when there’s too much pressure.
* I’m too tired/sick/hungry to stop today.
* The next time I have a bad consequence, I’m going to stop.
* I’ll stop after my spouse stops bugging me.

“If we let ourselves, we shall always be waiting for some distraction or other to end before we can really get down to our work. The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavorable. Favorable conditions never come." - C.S. Lewis

Lewis may be right, but the addicted brain hopes for unfavorable conditions because the bottom line is this: addictions call the shots, shackling us to a domineering sin master.

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