Addict

I find it interesting to explore the origins of words. Especially if the modern use is different from the way it was used centuries ago. One such word is addict.
That word may conger up some unsavory images in your mind because of how we use it today but that wasn't always the case. I was able to find out that the word "addict" was used in different ways hundreds of years ago. It was used as a legal term meaning "to deliver someone over by the sentence of a judge." The prisoner was "addicted" to prison.
Another sense of the word was used in a more casual way in conversation. A person would announce that he was an addict of the theater, sports, or a hobby. Much in the same way we use the word "fan" now. (We have adopted the suffix "oholic" also and connect it to chocolate, shopping, etc. Like chocoholic, or shopocholic).
Formally the word "addict" meant "made over (not like the popular "make-overs") or bound to another. Attached by restraint (chains perhaps) or obligation (like an employment agreement). Addict also carried the meanings of "obliged, bound, devoted and consecrated". We as believers could be called (under the old usage) addicted to God. More on that later.
With the modern usage of this word, it would sound quite odd for us to use "addict" in connection with God. Today it carries a more negative connotation. The sad fact is that today if someone is called an addict, it usually refers to a broken life of bondage to drugs or alcohol.
The Bible doesn't use the word "addict", but it does describe that state of being. Scripture tell us, "For by whom a person is overcome, by him also he is brought into bondage" (2 Peter 2:19).
Think of the addict who just experimented with drugs to try them out. More times than not that person will acknowledge that they were "overcome" by those experiments and now is in bondage, or a slave to it.
We are told in another place, "all things are lawful for me, but all things are not helpful (profitable). All things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of anything" (1 Cor. 6:12). That's being overcome and bound under the power of whatever on is addicted to.
Are you "addicted"? You can turn your affection over to something new. It sounds simple, but it may be very difficult to accomplish. But it can be! Here is how it works; "For just as you presented your members (body) as slaves of uncleanness and of lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves of righteousness for sanctification" (Romans 6:19). We can be addicted to God.
Your flesh may be weak, but if your spirit is willing it can be done in the Power of God. The weak flesh needs to be disciplined, when it cries out for its wants and desires. Turn to God for His grace in that time of need. Strengthen the spirit and deny the flesh. We need not be under the power of anything but God.
Pastor Chuck