Reverencing God is essential to sobriety. Who would argue that we who are vulnerable to addiction need wisdom? The fear of the Lord shape sand defines and molds, solidifies, and perfects the highest quality of sobriety you could ever hope for. The greatest motivation for abstaining from addiction has and ever will be love and reverence for God. Reverencing God has been the secret to sobriety since the beginning of time. Somewhere along the way, that vision was lost as people strayed from looking to the Word of God for the answers to the most complex issues (as though God is insufficient to meet the demands that addictions place on our souls.) But, the Bible has not changed. Nor has our nature so long as we are awfully captivated by things outside of but God. Just as the insult of irreverent idolatry defines addictions, our reverence for God defines sobriety. Just as there are degrees of sanity and insanity, there are degrees of sobriety, degrees of obsession, and degrees or levels of reverence or irreverence for God. Dr. Edward T. Welch states that "There is a Christian myth that change is an event rather than a process; that it is more like a light switch that is turned on than a battle that must be engaged. For some reason, we tend to think-wrongly-that immediate liberation from the slavery of addiction is more glamorous than the gradual process of taking a little bit of land at a time." (Addictions: A Banquet in the Grace) What is commonly referred to as recovery should be called maturity! (Recovery is an inaccurate term because you can't recover something that you don't have.) Transformation can also describe what is needed to break the chains of addiction. To be transformed is to be changed. In Quality Sobriety we see from the change of Abraham's reverence for God that change does not always happen at once. The process of becoming less attached to the things of the world and more to God is called sanctification. Our sanctification relies on reverence for God. Sanctification and sobriety and sanity are all related. Who is their right mind would choose anything over God? And then there are levels of joy as well. Joy and reverence are closely linked. Strong Exhaustive Concordance and Dictionary says that to reverence God means to prize (fix valuation upon), splendor, esteem (esp. of the highest degree), gaze, behold, take heed, bashfulness or modesty (towards God), honor, and enjoy. Our joy becomes a powerful weapon against the temptations of addiction. One of the elements of joy is contentment. Contentment allows those who have chased after the idols of addiction to rest. Joy produces satisfaction with what God has given us. Very closely related to contentment is the element of gratitude or thanksgiving. We are not just satisfied with the things that God has provided us with, we are thankful. Reverencing God provides the greatest intimacy that is available to Man. The greatest joy that was forfeited with the fall of Man was bearing the image of His marvelous Creator. It is to the degree that we reverence God that we bear His image. The more we reverence God, the more we desire to bear His image while disdaining all else (that includes addictions.) We must deny ourselves in reverencing God. That's how we bear His image. The more we bear His image, the more we reverence and enjoy Him. The more that we bear the image of God, the more we are led by Him. The more that we are led by Him, the more we love Him and love others. On the contrary-the less that we reverence God, the less that we bear His image. The less that we bear His image, the less that we reverence Him and enjoy Him. The less that we bear His image, the less that we are led by Him. The less that we are led by Him, the less that we love Him and others.
