Notes to download: Loving an Alcoholic or Addict
There is no more frustrating, confusing and painful process as watching a loved one, your child or spouse slowly and methodically be destroyed by an addiction or besetting sin. This can be a process like gambling or porn, or a substance like alcohol or cocaine. The final result is death and that road down to hell is littered with lost loves, broken homes and the destroyed lives of children.
Man has rejected God and the bible as the solution and so we have 70% of our prison population there on drug related offenses. 30% of our nation is obese as they drug their bodies with food and numb out in front of hours of TV reality shows each one going one step further in intensity to titillate a jaded audience.
Addiction is a spiritual issue and unless it is approached from that perspective we will be as effective as telling our children to catch air molecules or scoop water with a butterfly net. Liquid and gas is not going to be caught with a net designed for solids. Spiritual problems and soul problems are not going to be fixed with physical means. All the jail cells and all the rehab centers and all the talk therapy and all the new methadone programs and nicotine patches, the hypnosis, are similar to putting band aids on cancer.
Addiction is about changing the way we feel – and an addict will give anything to feel different. The very fruits of the Spirit – love joy and peace Gal 5:22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace… are only a crack pipe away as we try to replace what only comes from God. Satan has again counterfeited what is Gods to give.
God in the beginning had a choice – He could have avoided the issue of sin and kept us in a sterile, pain free creation. He could have destroyed Satan before creating man. God’s plan and His design for us included Christ slain from the beginning of the world. Re 13:8 And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, … of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.
His first call was to Adam hiding from Him in shame after Adam rejected a perfect home and a perfect parent. Man and Satan were comfortable together, it was God they hid from. It was God who promised Messiah the Savior, to Eve in the garden and it was God who killed the first lamb to dress our parents, and make a way back to Him.
So the tragedy of parents watching children destroy all their hopes and dreams for them was God’s tragedy first – but He did not react in anger, self pity, or blame, or guilt. God never said “Stay in Eden” either…But set the rules and conditions of His children’s return to Him.
God had prepared for mans fall but it was through this failure and pain that He was to exalt Jesus as Savior. This wound and its healing would teach us much about Him that we would never have known or experienced otherwise. Light and goodness can only be shown off against darkness and evil. You lay a diamond on black velvet to show its brilliance and it was against Satan’s evil that God was to lay His perfection His holiness and His mercy and His grace.
God has the solution for sin….any and all sin…Sin of breaking of the law….Sins of omission, Sins of commission, physical addictions and dependencies, minor transgression…monstrous iniquity and all the shades and types of rebellion and the self destructive defiance of idolatry and rebellion against a Holy God. Isa 53:4 Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows; yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. 5 But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. {wounded: or, tormented}
God spoke the universe into existence in a day but a Holy God had to walk the earth to ultimately endure every humiliation and rejection to die to redeem us. Grace is not cheap but the work has been done and so God knows the pain of a parent and unrequited love. Have we discussed this pain with God in our prayers as parent to parent?
God allowed sin, so rather than deny what our loved ones are doing what they are doing – let’s embrace that truth by putting them out of Eden and letting the consequences of their actions drive them back to God.
