Addiction Much?

I walk past the coffee maker and look at it longingly.  Missing that bitter and surprisingly sweet brew to be slipping down my throat at that minute having taken its journey past all my taste buds.  Sighing, I feel the pain in my chest caused by heartburn that I have been suffering from the past few days; I walk past almost able to smell the coffee in the air.  Trying my hardest to wrestle two kids into clothes and into the car, I forget to dress myself and drive to school, late, in my jammie top covered in a thick coat so no one will notice.  Getting home, I walk past the coffee maker again, the urge to brew a pot is so strong.  I plant myself at my computer to write this and all I can think of is coffee.  Coffee and heartburn. 

The past 3 days I have had severe heartburn going on.  I don’t know why it is happening, but it is.  Waking up and being kept awake from 11pm- 5am with shooting pains stabbing your chest does not help the no-coffee factor while trying to stay awake. Counting the seconds and the minutes that the pain is intense, waiting for it to go away, exhausted and hungry.  Everything I eat causes some sort of pain, everything other than a McDonalds Strawberry Milkshake, for some reason that is soothing. 

I miss my coffee.  My mood isn’t very good, my eyes struggle to stay open, I am ready for bed early.  I am addicted.  I will admit it.  I am addicted.  In the morning, one of the first things that I usually do is to make coffee.  On days when I forget to, I feel it by the end of the day.  I have an addiction, I long for it.  My addiction is strong, it is long standing, it has developed over years.  I am hopeful that once my heartburn goes away, I can go back to drinking it. 

I had to ask God what he wanted me to see in this situation.  Giving up coffee…  the pain…  Sometimes things that we do are not good for us.  We are addicted to bad things in life, it could be gambling, pornography, drugs, alcohol….  We are addicted to things that aren’t bad, but take a priority in our lives a lot of time also like Facebook, the Internet, Pintrest.  Not all addictions are bad things, but we really have a hard time not knowing what to do without them.

So here is what God tells me this morning: why are you addicted to coffee?  Why are you addicted to the internet and the computer, but you are not addicted to Me?  I am the one that gave you life, gave you your family, children, I gave you the coffee plant and you choose to dwell on that when you didn’t spend time with ME this morning.  Why do you choose that addiction and not get addicted to My word?

Burn God…  Burn…  How true is that- he is the one that gave us everything, that formed us in our wombs and knew us before we were made, but we are more addicted to all these other things.  I was lead to the chapter in John – John 4 starting at verse 1 and going through verse 26 I have taken a few of the verses below.  The woman goes to the well to get water.  Water was scarce and she needed water.  She was involved in all sorts of bad things.  She was living with a man that wasn’t her husband, she was addicted to lust. 

¹³ Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, ¹⁴ but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

¹⁵ The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”

¹⁶ He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.”

¹⁷ “I have no husband,” she replied.

Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. ¹⁸ The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”

¹⁹ “Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. ²⁰ Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”

²¹ “Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. ²² You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. ²³ Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. ²⁴ God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”

²⁵ The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”

²⁶ Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you—I am he.”

I want the water He was talking about.  I want to be addicted to Jesus and not coffee.  I want to desire Jesus, not Facebook.  I want to get my inspiration from Jesus, not from silly saying on Pinterest.  I want and need Jesus to be the living water and then I won’t be thirsting for the things of this world.  I only want to thirst for Him. 

I am hoping to be able to start drinking coffee again soon.  When I do though, I am going to be sure that I am drinking it with the memory that my real addiction need to be to God and to the Word of God.