Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, for all that is in the heavens and in the earth is yours. Yours is the kingdom, O Lord, and you are exalted as head above all.

1 Chronicles‬ ‭29‬‬:‭11‬

In the midst of active addiction, we put our disease on a pedestal. We worship at the idol of our vices.

The intuition is correct; the focus is simply wrong.

We have been designed for worship, for wonder, for beholding greatness. But we turned these natural desires inward in our addiction.

Aren’t we continually seeking after that moment of feeling just right, of getting back to the perfect level of buzzed that we remember from our first experiences?

We are nostalgic for our own feelings. We are looking forward to going back. But we can’t. The spiral of addiction confirms this over and over.

We kill ourselves trying to manage on our own. We delude our lives trying to fill it with more self-focused activity. We push away those who try to love us as we seek our own way.

Misdirection will be our new best friend if we can muster the courage and willingness to allow it to work.

We must find a way to stop focusing on ourselves and try looking toward God.

Our nostalgic full court press is not working. We are tiring and dwindling and aging and failing.

What do we have to lose in trying another way? God does not make too hard of terms for those who seek Him, but we’ve got to at least step in that direction to begin investigating.

God, help me lay down my nostalgic desires.