Overcoming Substance Abuse

[i]

 

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!

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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[i] https://blog.uniongospelmission.org/the-impact/panhandling

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Emotional Religion Pitfalls

Ephesians 4: 24

King James Bible

And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.

Twice a year in boarding school we had a week of prayer. These were often conducted by great preachers locally or from overseas. Twice a day for a week they would tell stories and experiences of the mighty power and self-sacrificing love of God. These stories would tell how God renewed the lives of great sinners. They also told of the terrible punishments that God would inflict on wanton sinners.

By the great culmination of the week of prayer series, on Friday nights, with soft music being played on the piano, the preacher would invite us up to the front to tell about our experiences. For an hour and many times longer than that one student after another would go forward and with lots of tears and sobbing the students would tell of their sins. They would bring up a pack of cigarettes or an evil book or an object they had stolen and throw it in a waste basket provided for that purpose, renouncing their old lives.

Then with deep fervor they would “put on the new man.” They would promise that from then on they would live the righteous life God had given them. On Sabbath morning we would witness the baptism of some of these students. I would sit there in the audience, but I would not feel the great emotion that the other students expressed. I did not go forward except on very rare occasions when peer pressure would force me to. On my part there was never any weeping or remorse, even though I counted myself as being a worse sinner than the others.

Like a new garment, this “new man”, would quickly become soiled and torn. I knew this from early experience—these twice annual weeks of prayer had been a part of my education ever since the first year I went to school. I knew what the result would be. The man of God who had brought about such a marvelous emotional transformation in every student would leave to conduct the next week of prayer at the next school. He would be rejoicing that “God had used him” to save so many lost sinners. The conference leaders would claim another great success and heap accolades on the preacher.

However, by Saturday night or Sunday at the latest, the “new man” of Friday night would be so stained and tattered as to be scarcely recognizable. None of these preachers ever showed us how to keep putting on a fresh “new man” every day. The penitents would rapidly sink into greater sin. They would deny the origin of the repentance they had professed and boldly blaspheme God.   

Like a vain dieter who discovers a new diet, loses 10 pounds in 3 weeks and then over the course of the next few months adds 15 pounds back on, becoming fatter and less healthy by each experience, the poor student would be plunged more deeply under the control of the devil.

Lord, create a new man of righteousness and true holiness for me today and see to it that I wear it today.