Time Out

Jeremiah 5
But these people have stubborn and rebellious hearts. They have turned aside and gone away. They do not say to themselves, "Let us fear the LORD our God, who gives autumn and springs rains in season." Your wrong doings have kept these away. Your sins have deprived you of good."

I think that sometimes people in addiction forget that they are the purveyor of their own troubles.
They had a tendency to blame everyone else but themselves.
They blame society for not giving them the breaks that they think other people have gotten.
They blame their parents for not being very good at the way they were raised.
They blame God (go figure) for the way their lives have turned out.
The point the finger at every one except themselves.
Why?
Because it is too painful to look at their own life.
Forget that they had the ability to choose just like every one else. Now, after a long history of addiction, they have lost that choice to choose. An alcoholic does not possess the ability to choose not to drink. It truly takes intervention from a Power greater than themselves to stop the insanity in their life.

My sinful nature keeps the good things of God at bay.
I have separated myself, by believing the lie of addiction, from the blessings and life God wants to give me.
I believe that God is the God of Genesis 1:1 ----that He created everything with the sheer sound of his voice and the power he possesses. But I do not believe that this same God could actually speak into my life and bring about the creation of a new life, one free from addiction (II Cor. 5:17).
It is the breaking down of the lies we have bought into under our addiction that allows the Holy Spirit of God to do His work. Breaking down and casting out of our old patterns of sinful behavior and replacing it with a new way of living. This is the God I know! One who restores, redeems and sets free from a life of darkness and death.

Psalm 128
Blessed are all who fear the LORD, who walk in his ways.
You will eat the fruit of your labor, blessings and prosperity will be yours.
Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house.
Your sons will be like olive shoots around your table.
Thus is the man blessed who fears the Lord.

As it is written in Deuteronomy.....
"See, I have put before you today blessings and curses....Choose!"

God on you....
mb