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Psalm 51:12
New English Translation (NET Bible)
12 Let me again experience
the joy of your deliverance!
Sustain me by giving me the desire to obey!
Sustain me by giving me the desire to obey!
My wife, Sylvia, stopped and chatted briefly with a beggar
at the freeway off-ramp. His sign read, “Save me from myself.” She sensed in
him the sincere desire to rid himself from a life of substance abuse. She
chatted with him a second time a day or two later. He committed to going with
her to a Salvation Army place that gives alcoholics (and druggies) a place to
live and eat while they are coming clean from their controlling
substances. She offered to take him and
then came to me and asked me to go with her. I didn’t totally approve of what
she had done, but I was certainly not going to let her be alone with him.
When we went to fetch him, he was not at the prearranged
place. We finally contacted him at his girlfriend’s home. It became evident in
the ensuing conversation that he was definitely for real in his decision to
come clean. It also became evident that although he had claimed to have been
off of alcohol for some period, his trip to his girlfriend’s place was to
indulge his habit one more time.
On the drive to the Salvation Army hostel, he told of us his
conversion to Jesus Christ a couple of years previously. He spoke in glowing
terms of the euphoria that came over him when he accepted salvation. He
expressed the hope that this euphoria would take hold of him again. From our conversation
it became apparent to me that the young man was seeking the feeling of ecstasy
more than victory over the substance.
I told him of my conversion to Christ and how my Christian
experience had grown but without the same feelings as at the time of
conversion. I did my best to encourage him to continue the spiritual fight by
the help of the strength that Christ’s Spirit would provide him.
We sat through a careful questioning an officer of the Army
gave him. It put more of the hard reality of the ongoing fight in his future
than I had given him on the hour’s trip over. The officer pointed out that
unless he had been clean for six weeks they wouldn’t take him into their
program. He did provide an address of a family that was willing to take him in
and let him live with them for the six weeks and warned him strongly that they
couldn’t help him if he didn’t pass this period of probation.
Sylvia had gotten in touch with the young man’s mother. She
was obviously at wit’s end. She was also very hopeful and thankful that Sylvia
had taken an interest in her son. Things did go well for a period of time, but
then, without the initial euphoria, he went back to his old ways of living.
The Psalmist’s desperate plea for God’s sustaining power is
the absolutely critical part in our battle against the united forces of evil that
are seeking to destroy us.
Our Almighty King, may
Your sustaining power give us the overwhelming desire to keep obeying You!
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https://blog.uniongospelmission.org/the-impact/panhandling
#California, #IE, #Alcohol, #Dependence, #MotherSon, #SalvationArmy,
#CleanOfDrugs, #Psalms, #Conversion, #Habit, #Euphoria, #Ecstasy, #Overcome, #Panhandler
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