When we practice addiction we are trying to alleviate fear, anxiety, and usually a chemical imbalance with excess pleasure. The problem is that we usually have to use more and more pleasure to feel satisfied and there will come many consequences to using too much pleasure to treat too much pain. Besides whatever physical consequences, there are also social, marital, vocational, and spiritual "pain bills" you will have to pay in the end. You see over-pleasure creates a bill that keeps running up higher and higher until one day it is so high that pain comes to collect the debt.

We may think we are making our life better through addiction but there is always a price of pain to pay with too much pleasure. Drug addiction creates painful withdrawals, overeating creates the pain of exercising and dieting to work the fat off again not to mention the public ridicule that comes from being overweight, self-injury creates wounds and permanent scars, porn ruins you for sex and has led to many painful divorces. The list goes on and on. Think about your own addiction and the pain it has caused you. So what is the answer? How do we get through the past and present pain that we have to face and carry every day without our pleasure pacifiers?

First of all we need to take all of our old unhealed pain that we have been carrying around from our life and lay it all at Jesus feet and ask Him to help us to heal it. Second of all we need to allow the Holy Spirit to counsel us and unravel the roots of all the lies we have believed about ourselves, others, and God. And thirdly, we need to learn to meet our pleasure needs in right and healthy ways and resist the urge to run back to our old pleasure idols. Ask God to help you to develop healthy pleasures in your life and you will begin to enjoy things that you never used to. This is your day my friend to live free from addiction so allow God to lead you into His true pleasures.