7 years ago I was insanely addicted to a video game called World of Warcraft (WOW). When I say addicted, I mean meth-head addicted. On an average week, I spent 10 hours a day commuting and working, I still managed to average 11 hours a day game-time. I would get home from work at about 4:30 pm and play until 1 am. I would then sleep maybe 2-3 hours and wake up and play until I had to leave for work at 5:30 am. On the weekends, I played 15-20 hours per day. I did this for 4 years of my life. It was insanely unhealthy but the addiction was real. I couldn’t sleep well because I was always thinking about the game. I thought about it all day at work. I though about it during my commute. The game consumed every aspect of my life. It has been years since I have played World of Warcraft, but as I set off on this journey my top goal was to get as close to God as I possible could. As I left in January God reminded me of a verse in the Bible. Jeremiah 29: 11-14, “11) For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. 12) Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. 13) You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all of your heart. 14) I will be found by you, declares the Lord, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations…” So I began to pray over this verse. I began asking God to give me a desire to seek Him. God has answered that prayer and over the last few months God has been bringing me closer and closer and increasing my hunger for Him exponentionally. I can’t seem to get enough time with Him. I have been reading some awesome books about my relationship with Him and I have been spending more and more time reading His word and in prayer. Last month, I would wake up each morning at 7 am to spend time praying and reading the Bible. Every morning wasn’t easy for me to get up, but I did because I believed that if I was seeking Him with all of my heart, He would pull me deeper into relationship with Him. He has been very faithful in answering His promise in Jeremiah 29:14. Those mornings were so sweet, He taught me so much about love, restoration, prayer, how to be a doer not just a listener, His plan for my future, and my identity in Christ. Learning about what my identity is in Christ has completely changed how I see my relationship with Him and how I see the Bible. I am literally on fire for Him right now. Last week God challenged me to simply get up when He woke me up in the morning and spend time with Him. I accepted His challenge. The first morning He woke me up at 6:30 am and we had a great morning together. The next morning He woke me up at 4:30 am and because the last morning had gone so well I was really excited to get up and spend more time with Him. This continued for a week and He was consistently waking me up at 4:30 am every morning, I didn’t set any sort of alarm. I began to realize that I was quickly becoming addicted to spending time with God, learning about God, learning about how I should be treating people, deepening my relationship with Him, and praying. I wrote this in my journal last week, “God, you got me up this morning at 3:30 am and the last 4 hours have been awesome. God, can you please freeze time so I can spend the next 20 hours with you, learning and growing closer to you? Lord, my addiction to World of Warcraft was bad. It literally consumed every waking moment, it replaced my need to eat and sleep. I loved it so much that I structured my entire existence around it. I dwelt on WOW at work, in the car, while I slept. It kept me awake at night because I couldn’t stop thinking about it. God, turn my desire for you into an addiction stronger than my addiction to WOW. Turn the drive, and desire I had for WOW into a desire, addiction, passion for You. I want to be consumed by my desire for You.” After I wrote that God asked me this, “Jason, will you stay awake with Me tonight? Let’s go deeper. Let us spend 12 hours of solid time together.” I got excited and said, “Sounds good God. Let’s do it.” So that is what we did. It was incredible. I learned so much that night and God blessed me so much the next day. You would think that after getting up at 3:30 am and then staying up all night that the next morning I would be pretty tired by 8 am, but as I got breakfast ready with my team, I felt like I had just slept 8 hours. I was so excited. That day, we spent all day digging two huge drainage ditches in the blistering hot sun and I felt fine. I was full of energy but more importantly, I was full of love, joy, and thankfulness. Every day since then has been a constant desire to learn more about God and to put that learning into practice as I serve the people of Bolivia. It says in Psalm 37:4, “Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart”. If you ask Him to give you a heart that desires and delights in Him, I can personally tell you that God will answer that prayer in awesome and outstanding ways. God’s desire and delight is to have a personal relationship with each one of us and He loves it when His children desire the same thing. My challenge to you is to ask God for a heart that desires and delights in Him. He will answer you and when He does, I hope you also find yourself becoming addicted to God.
