PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

Personal Experience

     Some of you may be wondering what kind of qualifications and, or experience I have with addiction and being set free from it. I have been set free from so many things that I could write an entire book about all the things God has redeemed me from, but for now I will tell you about the most recent and two of the most difficult addictions that I have been completely delivered from.

      I smoked cigarettes for 17 ½ years and had a great desire to quit, but some believe that nicotine is more addictive than heroin and I knew I was bound and powerless, I knew I would need God’s help. I did a lot of what I like to call pray-paring (my term for preparing) and I will admit that at first I sought and used the help of nicotine patches, but the more I sought God the more I realized I didn’t need that external help. He became “the thing” that replaced cigarettes. The more I sought God and asked Him to take the desire for the cigarettes away, the more I didn’t want cigarettes and the more I desired a life filled with the new things of God. 
     You do have to be ready to give up the addiction, but when you are ready there is nothing that God won’t do to make sure you are filled with His supernatural power and the ability to succeed—after all, it is His reputation that is on the line!

      The other deliverance is nothing short of a miracle— I was taking doctor prescribed pain medication for chronic conditions, of which I am seeking total and complete healing, but as it goes with the world’s answer for everything I had to keep taking more and more to even get some relief.    Nothing was really working or even helping me and after 12 ½  years of taking opiates (it started with vicodin and ended with morphine) I realized I was now taking them just to keep from withdrawing and getting sick. Once again, I needed God’s help. I needed to be set free from this bondage of pain medication that wasn’t even helping me with pain control.  I began pray-paring myself for a long rough road. I did not abuse my pain medication by using too much, but I had taken pain medicine for over 12 years and I knew the more you do and the longer you’ve been taking it the worse the withdraw can be so I was completely pray-pared to endure some serious withdraw. God had other plans! I had been given some useful information from my son who was at the time a serious heroin addict (it’s funny the things and, or people God will use to help us), he told me that if you start to wean yourself off of the pills a little bit at a time you can almost avoid the withdraw all together—well by doing that AND giving my addiction and the pain to God and trusting Him to see me through what I thought would be days of lying in bed writhing in pain from withdraw  ended up being a few muscle cramps in my legs for a day or two;I was then DONE with opiates!

      I know beyond any doubt that God took the desire AND withdraw away and I will never be able to thank Him enough for everything He has done for me. I can’t wait to get to heaven where I will forever thank Him!!!  Psalm 34:8 NKJV,”Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the man who trusts in Him!”

      Don’t you want to know this Great God of mine? He can help you with ANYTHING you are facing!!!

~

DEFINING ADDICTION

Defining Addiction

Someone asked me the other day to define addiction, he was actually a critic and his question was posed like this, “Most people are addicted to air and food, define addiction?”

      Well let’s look at the secular definition of addiction and then I will talk about what I believe constitutes addiction. It is defined as, “The state of being enslaved to a habit or practice or to something that is psychologically or physically habit-forming, as narcotics, to such an extent that its cessation causes severe trauma.”  I believe that most people would agree that this sums it up pretty well, but the truth is addiction can be subtle and it can worm its way into your life without you really understanding how devastating it can become. It makes sense, after all, if addictions announced their intentions of coming into our lives and if we knew just how much destruction they would bring we would (of course) not succumb to them, but as I said—it starts out subtly and before you even realize it you can become addicted to something…anything!

     I told my friend asking me to define addiction that I believe it is ANYTHING that takes us away from God and His will for our life! That is a very broad statement I know, but really we must realize that God does not want us to want anything more than we want Him. Notice I’m using the word want here for a reason, some think that an addiction to something means that you NEED it, but really if you are addicted to something ( or someone), you don’t need it at all, what is really going on is that you WANT it! And if you want something more than you want God you are in big trouble and it doesn’t really matter how your addiction presents itself, by means of a drug, by way of drinking too much alcohol, or yes for some, even eating too much food. The addiction/s are specific to us not to God they all destroy our relationship with Him because they take us away from Him and His will for our lives—that is why they are so dangerous!!!

     If you will let Him, God will use the journey from addiction to freedom (in and through Him) for your good and His glory and you can finally know freedom once and for all!

     Maybe you only looked at addiction the way the secular world does and you never even thought about God in terms of your addiction keeping you from Him, but here is the Good News…sometimes it is the very thing He uses to draw you to Him! With God there is no waste of any kind so He will use what was meant for evil against us for our good (Genesis 50:20) and (Romans 8:28).  I want you to know that as I said before—addictions are specific to us only and that is because of the different levels of destruction they can cause in our lives. A heroin addiction will certainly be more destructive to a life than an addiction to coffee, soda or other foods, probably even cigarettes, but to God they are all the same if they keep us from Him and we are choosing them (addictions) instead of looking to Him for what we need and want!  

     God really must be your ultimate addiction—remember we determined earlier that an addiction is an excessive want, but God is the only addiction that can fill both your needs and your wants. Here is the thing I want people to get if they don’t understand anything else I want them to get this—If you don’t fill the void in your heart and life with God you can rehab a million times at the most expensive facility in the world and it won’t do you a bit of good because He is the only one who can set you free. Oh, you might give a drug up or quit drinking but if you don’t fill that void with Him after making it empty (by giving up the addiction) you will only go back to that same thing or you will pick up a different addiction—it’s because your spirit is longing for something, that something is God and until you fill it with Him you will keep trying to fill that void with something….anything! I believe this is the very reason people relapse, they haven’t filled the void up with God so they keep looking for something to fill that hole inside of them.

     The world perpetuates the idea, once an addict always an addict, not so in the Kingdom of God—“If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17). Hallelujah!

     Be set free today by the power and the blood of Jesus and you will be free indeed! (John 8:36)