When people go to 'AA they get up and introduce themselves saying: My name is Tim and I am an alcoholic. The Bible say for us to be lovers of God, not lovers of pleasure. I will use AA's technique. My name is Tim, and I am a lover of pleasure more than a lover of God. Arrowsmith wrote a song called "I don't want to miss a thing." Won't I be giving up something if I increase my love of God and decrease my pleasure? Not likely. The only thing that we do here on earth that is real is to love and serve God. When we start to do something that is real our joy starts to increase. Consider praying: "Father, take away my love of pleasure, and show me Your will." When we cut out some pleasure to focus on a Christian trait like meekness, we are focusing on being lovers of God. Meekness involves humility, but more importantly with this habit, it is enduring injury with patience and without resentment. One of satan's best trick is to blast you (injury) to tempt you severely. Developing the habit of fighting injury with patience and without resentment is loving God. Why. Because, we have all fallen in the past when bad things happened. Second, focusing on increasing a Christian trait is loving God because we will be thinking about new things not bad things. Third, the type of pleasures I like may tend to lead to temptation. If I cut some of them out to focus on loving God, maybe I would have less temptation. I have added the verse about being lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God to the verses that I meditate on often.
Can you increase your pleasure by going back to an addiction? The correct answer is not yes, but it is also not no. The Heroin addict who relapses increases their short-term pleasure (unless they die or overdose), but, then they return to their own personal hell for the long term. If you are addicted for life you will always choose the short-term over the long-term. Second, the pleasure that we get from addiction never includes joy. I wrote an article that stated: “You can't increase your pleasure with addiction.” While this does contradict the above statement a bit, it is true if you have any joy in your life. When you are free for a bit you may love your job, mom, spouse, hobby, sport or a million other “clean” things. But within hours of going back to our chains, the darkness surrounds us, we treat others more poorly, our great job seems meaningless, and we almost don't care about “anything.” The truth is... that tiny short-term bit of pleasure, made almost everything that was good in our life decrease. Now read the above-underlined sentence again. It makes more sense now. But if you fully believe that fact, that is great news. With your newfound faith, you can now try activites with a new confidence. Example: you tried playing the guitar as an alternative activity. It did not take. If you were going back to the habit regularly, you contaminated that activity or any other activity. Instead, if you are going to war with lust, and trying to do things God's way, guitar playing might become a great hobby for you. You might even learn a few Christian songs to play. The key thing with hobbies is: “The more fully dedicated to quitting you are, the more fun your new hobby will become.” Do you believe your life can be great if you do things God's way? Consider praying: “Father, help me to remember that I can't increase my pleasure by going back.” Even our pleasure will “Always” be better for the week, month, and year if we focus on living life the right way.”
