“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make your paths straight” (Proverbs 3:5-6, NASB)
“The mind of man plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps.” (Proverbs 16:9, NASB)
Before I got into recovery, I managed to find the time to devote to the sexual addiction and same-sex lust that ruled my life for so long. It never mattered how busy the other parts of my life were, I was fully devoted to making time for those habits. My productivity at work suffered greatly. I rarely had enough energy at the end of a day to spend engaging with my wife or other people who were important to me. I would often use my lunch hour to pursue my habit—forgoing lunch in favor of getting my sexual high. I was willing to sacrifice anything and do anything it took to satisfy those inordinate desires. Looking back on it, I see how truly sick my mind was.
When I got into recovery and fully committed to staying sexual sober, the amount of time in each day seemed to increase dramatically. I began to realize the inordinate amount of time I had been spending engaging in the addiction. I suddenly had a lot of spare time. Dealing with that spare time was difficult because I could not fill it with the old habits and all that was left was a “time vacuum”. I felt as if the walls of the house were closing in on me or that I wanted to climb the walls. I always had to be doing something, or so I thought. It was a very scary time for me because I had time to think and I had to face myself and I had to come face to face with God.
As I kept going to recovery meetings the phrase more than any other that I kept hearing from people who shared was “one day at a time”. For me that phrase helped me to get through some very difficult moments. In my experience “one day at a time” got shortened to “one hour at a time” and then eventually quite literally to “one moment at a time”. Another helpful phrase was “do the next right thing” whatever that happened to be in that moment. After trying to apply those concepts to my everyday life for some time, something remarkable started to happen. My life started to make sense. The need for every waking moment of my life to be filled with activity was no longer there. It was OK to not be busy, to be able to sit in a room alone with just me, my thoughts, and my God. Spending time with God was no longer an item to be checked off of my “to do list”, but rather something I looked forward to each day. I am certainly not perfect in that respect. Sometimes I still talk myself out of getting up that little bit earlier to have time to spend alone with God. Sometimes I still make excuses about why doing something else is more important than getting face to face with God to gain his wisdom, direction and strength for the day. Sometimes I just don’t “feel” like it. However, I am growing to understand more fully that I can do nothing without HIM. He is the Source of everything in my life. I want to be able to say like the Apostle Paul, that God is not a part of my life but He is my Life.
Whenever life gets to busy to spend time with my Lord, something is seriously out of whack! When my life gets to that point, I go before the Lord and I ask Him for three things:
1. I ask Him to take away the things in my life that are not His will for me.
2. I ask Him to help me prioritize the things that remain.
3. I ask Him to help me to do the “next right thing”, whatever that is.
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