Everyone is designed with an instinct to worship and to be reverent, but the object of your worship and reverence is up to you. Many people are not necessarily conscious of this. They adopt whatever belief system was passed down to them and never make informed decisions about what they worship. Or, others may not have any kind of organized belief system, and turn the center of their worship to something they simply enjoy or value tremendously. The more conscious you are of what it is that you worship, the better off you are.

Those who worship something in an organized, conscious and deliberate fashion are usually religious. This does not mean that all religious people have a healthy practice of worship. Obviously, some religious people do not exercise any real intelligence or spirituality in their religion. What this means is that the most conscious form of worship takes place in either a religious or deeply spiritual context because it is the type of worship that require the most thought and understanding.

Then there are those who worship in a loosely focused way. They worship what they are passionate about, or what they derive a sense of reverence from, such as nature or art. These things inspire feelings of spirituality within them. They have not necessarily organized their thoughts on why they are moved to a sense of spirituality, they simply know that they have reverence toward something, so it becomes the object of their worship, meaning they devote their time, money, thoughts and energy into it.

And lastly, there are those who are grossly misplacing their sense of worship by focusing it on something unworthy of worship, such as an addictive substance or process. This often has more to do with not thinking carefully than it does making defiant decisions. Everyone has things they crave and struggle to personally moderate, but when the object of addiction becomes a person’s object of worship, it is best they rethink their priorities right away.

Whether or not you believe in God, you must be aware of what you treat like God. Everyone worships something because it is our human nature to do so. What is it that you worship? People who struggle with addiction have their answer already. Addiction replaces the role that God is meant to fill in a person’s life. People serve, focus on, crave and become emotional over their addiction. Consider what God is meant to be to us. We are meant to serve Him, focus on Him, crave His presence and be emotionally invested into Him. Addiction stands in they way of this all too important relationship.

When you are addicted, you serve your addiction with your entire life. Everything about the way you live is a testament to how much you love your addiction. You arrange your time around it, you budget your money for it, you bring it into conversations with your friends and family and you dream away about it when you do not have access to it. Your life is meant to revolve around your Creator in order to be healthy, but instead, it revolves around addiction, which makes you unhealthy.

When you are addicted, the object of your addiction is your focus. God is meant to be your ultimate focus, and in order to serve him well, you are meant to lend your focus where it is required, for instance, to your life’s purpose, your health, your relationships and your spirituality.  When addiction is your life’s focus, all of our priorities are skewed. The way you look at your life and the world are toxic. You are in the habit of devaluing things that matter deeply to your life, and overvaluing things that are unimportant in their place.

When you are addicted, your cravings are uncontrollable and are constantly sucking up all your energy. When you crave God, you are seeking him, which is the most natural spiritual state to be in. Heavily craving anything but God is dangerous to your soul. So is becoming emotional about your addiction. Your emotional faculties are unhealthy if your addiction is what moves you to emotion. Making God the center of your emotional life will ensure that your emotion is always focused where it should be.