There are things that create regular, normal pleasure; and, there are things that create incredible pleasure. Normal pleasure doesn’t addict you; extreme pleasure takes control over your life. The memory of the extreme pleasure dominates your thinking during your day. It drives you to do it again; it causes you to think about how you are going to recreate the situation. Rather than enjoying your normal day with its normal rewards, they all seem insignificant to the extreme pleasure of addicting activities.

There are things that help you succeed in life; and, there are things that dominate your life. There are things that reward you for being involved in life’s activities; and, there are things that reward you without you having to do anything to get the reward. Working to earn a living takes a lot of effort; but, knowing you did a good job gives you a mild type of pleasure. Getting drunk doesn’t take much work at all; but, it can give you a lot of pleasure. However, it interferes with the normal activities of your life. It encourages you to not enjoy life and draws your attention to the moment when you can get drunk again.

Marriage takes a lot of work; but, when a couple really puts the right efforts into it, it can bring them a lifetime of reasonable, normal pleasure. Having sex previous to marriage (fornication) or outside of your marriage (adultery) can give you extreme pleasure. It doesn’t require much work and it doesn’t involve much of a commitment. It allows you to get the pleasure you seek without building much of a relationship with a person. It is through relationships that real happiness comes your way.

Married couples go through struggles, difficulties, and have to work on their relationship. They never get addicted to marriage; instead, they grow in their love for each other. People who are just involved in sex get addicted to sex. They can leave one another, if they don’t meet their needs for sex and other aspects of pleasure. They aren’t in love with the person; they are using them to fulfill their addiction. It becomes a mechanical relationship where the person isn’t all that important; the experience is.

Getting drunk, having sinful sex, doing drugs, gambling, stealing, cheating people, lying to people, and all of those activities that help you get what you want at someone else’s expense bring great pleasure. But, they never involve love or love relationships. The people who are involved in these addictions will never know the pleasure that relationships provide. These kinds of pleasure are pleasures that create loneliness, depression, emptiness, and dissatisfaction.

Your body enjoys experiencing pleasure; the more intense the pleasure, the more it likes it. Your body will gravitate toward pleasure; it will think about it, remember the experiences that brought it, crave experiencing it again, and can become so addicted to it that it will even cause you pain if it doesn’t get it. If you do not control your body’s desire for extreme pleasure, you will gravitate toward pleasure rather than relationships. Your body can turn you into a selfish, self-centered, and ego-centric person. People like that are like cancer; cancer grows at a rapid pace, spends all its time reproducing, but contributes nothing to you.

Whether cancer starts growing in the cells of your brain, your heart, or your kidneys, it never helps these organs function. It just takes what it needs to reproduce itself and destroys the human body in the process. God has a better plan for humans than being selfish and just trying to meet their own needs without much regard for others. Jesus will be helping you get involved in win/win situations. He will help you not just care for your own wellbeing; He will help you see things from other people’s perspectives. He will help you be willing to learn how to help those around you get similar benefits. You will be able to get God’s wisdom and love operating in your life. They will change you into a person who can come up with incredible ways for meeting your and other people’s needs.