Finding Jesus Through Addiction
I'm positive there will be people who read this with no clue how to understand what the article is about. I apologize to you in advance. My prayer is that there will be a few individuals who either suffer from addiction themselves or have someone else they are close to in which this article will produce a little peace and patience for those being affected. You may or may not agree with the message I have in this article. This has simply been my experience and the message I have been led to share after spending time in prayer about the subject.How many of us have ever been at a 12 step meeting and laughed when the one person makes the comment? “No one grows up telling themselves that they want to be an alcoholic or a drug addict when they get older, or my goal in life is to one day be an alcoholic.” I tricked myself into believing this one thought was my curse for most of my adult life. From my earliest childhood memories in Arkansas, I can remember everyone making it clear to me that my father was an alcoholic and how horrible that makes a person. I can also remember being seventeen years old on a Saturday afternoon in March of 2000 with several of my friends, my dad, and a couple of his buddies. It was an awesome day, weather wise, for early March in Indiana. We were all around a campfire at the campground my father owns and had been drinking beer since earlier in the day. Everything was great. No one had any problems or a care in the world. It’s the night I specifically remember making the comment to my older brother. "If this is what being an alcoholic is, then this is exactly what I want.” I spent over ten years believing that saying those words is what created my problem. I now know the truth. Nothing I have ever said could have the power to give me the blessing of being an alcoholic.
I now know that I have this precious gift because my life was planned long before I was born.
Every single person who suffers and recovers from drug and alcohol addiction has been hand-picked by God. He chooses us because normal people could never live through the horrible lives we create through our addiction and survive to help others carrying the same cross. Normal people could never handle the broken families, loss of jobs, or seeing our children go without in order for us to get another buzz. Having family and friends grow to the point where they want nothing to do with us. Sleeping in cars or a tent in the woods and begging people who pass by on the streets for change, just to get another beer is something you have to experience in order to relate and provide comfort. There is no doctor, college degree, medicine, or self-help book that could ever help a person recover from this. Only Jesus and the special ones of us that He picks, who have lived through it ourselves.
God blesses us with gifts.
He also gives us the opportunity of killing ourselves with them or using them to point others to the cross. He allows us to make a choice of going to meetings, talking about our struggles with others, and going out of our way to encourage or inspire another person who is having a more difficult time than we are. God allows us to admit when we are wrong and make amends to those we have wronged in the past. He places people in our lives who can teach us how to serve Him first and others second. Only then will He bless us. God chooses us to be alcoholics and addicts.
Related Post: Fighting Spiritual Battles
If you are suffering from addiction, there's absolutely nothing I can tell you about your struggle you don’t already know. There's one thing I can tell you. The feeling is amazing once you're finally able to stare Satan in the face and laugh at him. This only happens once you have learned how to allow God to fight your battle for you.
The other part of the problem
This message is also for the person who looks down on those who are suffering. Addiction is a life-threatening matter. It’s not as simple as not drinking or using, not at first anyway. The battle we face is real. You staring down your nose at something you don’t understand might be what ends up pushing someone over the edge.
Related Post: Do You Laugh at Misfortune?
Since when does the Bible say to love your neighbor, unless they drink too much? Is there a verse that says give to the poor, unless they spend it on alcohol? If someone is suffering from addiction enough to ask you for change, trust me when I tell you that you have no clue how bad they need a drink. This doesn’t make them a bad person. It doesn’t mean that God loves you more than He loves them. It means they were created in His image and you're to love them the same way you would anyone else. I am not saying buy a 12 pack and start handing them out to the homeless. I am saying, when you give away change you know will be used to buy alcohol, say a prayer for the individual while walking away.