Well, I haven't posted on Artist on Demand, or done much creatively. I've been doing a lot of gaming (although I am limiting it, not being consumed by it). I went two years without it, after 30 years of playing it, and thought.. It's enough. I won't go back.
But I did. Then for seven months, no gaming. Then back.
I don't know if you understand the inside of an addict's heart, but let me give you a look through the keyhole.
We want to quit. We want to repent, to be free. Some of us do get that from God, for the rest of our lives. Others of us get a few years at a time, and others are completely consumed, like paper in a flame.
The hardest thing is the inability to repent, in a sense, because you think, "How can I promise God I won't do this again? I've already failed Him so many times," So you say," Lord, I'm powerless against this. I will not do it, if Your Spirit, Your resurrection power, is in Me. It's up to You, Lord. I will to quit, to be sober,"
But this is a pattern, and this particular form of flesh is as they say," cunning, baffling and powerful," particularly so.
So if You are an addict, know that God doesn't love you any less when You fail, and any more when You are sober. "Jesus is the same, yesterday, today, and forever," and "If we are faithless, he remains faithful, he cannot deny himself,'
If you are a loved one, know that your prayers are most helpful than anything else. "Elijah was a man with a nature like ours,"
He prayed it would not rain for 3 and a half years, and it did not. Then he prayed again, and it did.
It may be easier to move a physical mountain, to cast down a star with a prayer, but the real spiritual muscle is stepping up beside someone and fighting their demons with them. The real spiritual muscle isn't praying for rain. It's praying that God would replace "hearts of stone" with "hearts of flesh" and put "new spirits in them"
If you want to get better at prayer, intercede for everyone in your sphere of influence, especially the ones you struggle to love.