The Heart Of The Matter

Recovery is a "hot" word now days. Has been for a while. When I say it is a hot word or topic, I mean that there are a lot of churches today that are focusing efforts on helping those who are addicted to drugs and alcohol. What I have found in most cases is that people are ignorant concerning addiction. I hear everything from "You just got to stop using" to "Jesus will save you."
While it is true that Jesus will save you, what we have seen is that Jesus will not stop you from getting drunk.
When confronted by the Pharisees with the woman they had caught in adultery, Jesus told her to "go and sin no more." In other words, don't put yourself in places where you may be tempted to participate in this sin again. Stay away from men who see only to have sex with you. Sin no more.
For an addict that means cutting off what we refer to as "Playgrounds and playmates".  There are hard choices made about the people they can associate with. Choices about places they can and cannot go. Under the guidance of God's Holy Spirit, the addict has the guidance and empowerment to choose rightly, but it begins with learning to be follow. Learning to be disciplined in life and not living it based on emotions or feeling, but by the Spirit.

There is a term used in the book Becoming Recovered that I really like. On page 4 it reads like this..."The gift of desperation is the great motivator. People who cling to the program of action described in the big book (A.A.) with this gift of desperation, tend to be thorough and dedicated to their recovery. Those of us who were less desperate tended to test the limits of this program to see what we could get away with. Any time we felt a little relief during this process, we stopped our work and slowly fell back to our old ways of thinking.  We wanted to get what we could from this book and then get on with out lives. We treated this work as a trick to maintain abstinence rather than a path of spiritual transformation. We didn't want change. We didn't want to help other people. We just wanted to feel better and be done with it."

Jesus did for me what I could not do for myself.
I wanted to stop.
I wanted to be clean and whole, but I couldn't.
From this place of total darkness and depression came a cry...."Oh God, I can't do this. I need you. Come and save me."
This begins the new life.
The new path.
The new way.
And as we arise each day, sober.......possessing this new life, all we have to do is maintain it for 24 hours.
But during that 24 hours we must truly live "recovery at all costs."

IF you are struggling today with addiction, please drop me a note or post here on this blog.
My E-mail address is     rapha7@bellsouth.net.
My cell phone number is   256-490-1868.
Don't wait another day.
If you have read this posting today and you feel that "quickening" inside of you to do something, that is the Spirit of God speaking to you. Don't wait.

God on you......
mb