God: "I looked for someone to take a stand for me, and stand in the gap" (Ezekiel 22:30)
The word worship comes from the Saxon word weorthscype, which later became worthship. To worship God is to ascribe the proper worth to God, to magnify His worthiness of praise, or better, to approach and address God as He is worthy. As the Holy and Almighty God, the Creator and Sustainer of the Universe, the Sovereign Judge to whom we must give an account, He is worthy of all the worth and honor we can give Him and then infinitely more.
God is our all-sufficient Creator and Provider. In the first of the Ten Commandments He says, “You shall have no other gods before Me” (Ex. 20:3). Yet with addictions, we are revealing the fact that our hearts are bowing down to something we believe God cannot provide. The alcohol and drugs are not the essence of the issue. The problem is a heart that worships other gods. Maybe it’s the god of pleasure or the god of love or the god of acceptance or the god of peace or the god of control. You see, the problem is not outside of us. It’s not ultimately at the liquor store or on the Internet. The problem is within us and the booze and pornography are only satisfiers of deeper idols within our hearts. The problem is not the idolatrous substance. The problem is a passion in our heart that is wrongly satisfied with a false god (Concept adapted from Ed Welch, Addictions, p. 49).
