1 Corinthians 6: 12, Romans 5: 8, Galations 5: 22

Heather Bellamy

What is an addiction? Many of us suffer with them. There are the obvious ones, like drug addictions to heroin or alcoholism; however there are many others of us who suffer addictions which are harder to spot by others and ourselves; let's just list a few...addiction to shopping, smoking, lesser drugs like cannabis, masturbation, pornography, food addictions over or under eating. An addiction is something you can't break...it has a hold on you.

I'm a work in progress, I don't know about you?

I have suffered with addictions that God has worked me through to freedom from...He may yet show me other addictions I still need to work through...

'Everything is permissible for me - but not everything is beneficial. Everything is permissible for me - but I will not be mastered by anything.' 1 Corinthians 6: 12

Let's love ourselves and each other right now by having the freedom to declare that:

"I'm not perfect!!!!" and "Until I get to heaven, I'm not going to be!!!!!"

"I have flesh, sin, ungodly desires that war against my spirit!!!!!"

"I have wrong thoughts and feelings and sometimes I do and say things that aren't Christlike (every day)!!!!!"

Let's accept ourselves and not pretend that we're anything other than we are.

Ok, now I'm going to share some of my story to give you some hope.

When I was a teenager I thought that being a Christian meant that you didn't smoke, get drunk, take drugs or have sex outside of marriage. I thought that was it, if I didn't do those things that would mean I was a Christian. I thought therefore that I had to stop doing those things and then say to God..."God I've stopped those things, I'm presenting myself to you now, as a Christian".

I was totally wrong!

'But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.' Romans 5: 8

You and I cannot break our addictions by ourselves! The first foundation that has to happen before anything else is that you and I come to God as we are, not as we should be!!!!!!