Every New Year’s Day, for the past 14 years, I have woken up, sober, early, to catch the sun come up and thank God for something He did in my
life that I couldn’t do myself: quit drinking.
I have not had a drop in 14 years. And the freedom is
delicious.
We’ve all heard about, and I have been blessed to personally
live, the victory in Jesus over addiction. Some ask, as I have, why some folks
tend to find this victory and others do not? This is a mystery. I posit that for
some, their “bottom” is just much lower than others. For some, even losing
their jobs and families doesn’t seem to have any impact, or they turn into victims
rather than contrite accepters of their own role in their sorry state.
Whatever the addiction, the answer is the same. Whatever the
upbringing, the answer to finally growing up is the same. Whatever the school
of hard knocks we’ve attended, the answer is the same. And that answer is this:
we must agree with God regarding the sin He points out to us. And we must have
a relationship with Christ and we must cooperate with His Word and Holy Spirit
regarding our emotional, physical, mental and spiritual maturity. We cannot
agree with God on anything if we don’t know what He is expecting of us, and why
He’s expecting it. We can’t get right with ourself or others without first
getting right with God.
Paul, in 2 Corinthians 12:9, quotes the Lord’s words to him
when he writes, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect
in weakness.” Do we believe that?
First, do we believe with our hearts, minds, body and soul
that we are weak? I couldn’t stop drinking when I believed I was strong enough
to do it myself. Only through trying to quit in my own enlightened power and
failing did God show me my weakness, and thus I was made strong in Him.
Paul goes on to write, “Therefore I will boast all the more
gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.” Now, this
is not the kind of navel gazing “boasting” I wrote about in an earlier blog
post, where we sit around in share groups and lament our ongoing sin over and
over again. No. This boasting is the floodlight that illuminates our weakness
to do anything good without God. We can be self-righteous and continue to fail,
or we can receive the righteousness of God in us through the work of Christ and
His Holy Spirit, which He gives. This Holy Spirit is the quiet voice we
sometimes despise to hear, but in the end love to hear because it guides us
every time. It does not scream as loudly as the beer, or the cocaine, or the
online shopping site. The Holy Spirit is a guide, and a guide does not strong
arm. This is a mystery.
It takes complete agreement: heart, soul, body and mind to
obey the Holy Spirit’s direction from God to stop sinning. To stop drinking, we
must agree 100% with God that drinking for us is a sin. Note how I said “for
us.” Many people continue in their sin because it is not a sin for everyone. So
therefore, they conclude, it is not a sin for them. But the Holy Spirit will be
the judge of that. And we all know. Deep inside, we all know that when Grandma
Ruth drinks a sip, she isn’t sinning because she will stop at one drink. But is
drinking a sin for me?
We all know that when our best friend goes shopping, she
isn’t sinning; she hates shopping and will buy what she needs and leave the
store and not go in again until she absolutely has to. Shopping has no hold on
her. But is shopping a sin for me?
We all know that when a relative comes to us with a personal
problem, they are not in sin with gossip, because this person always speaks
with integrity. On this day, they need someone to talk to, and we can trust
that our conversation will be held in the strictest confidentiality. For the
person who struggles with the sin of gossip, everything and everyone in their
life is fodder for endless rumination and drama. They wouldn’t know
confidentiality if it bit them on the nose. Is gossip a sin for me?
We aren’t to look at what is a sin, or not, for others, and
live our lives on that basis. If addiction is cutting off our circulation to a
vibrant life, we might want to ask ourselves, “What is a sin for me?” And then
agree with God that indeed, He is right. It is a sin for me. That is the
turning of the page into freedom from addiction: full agreement with God is
always where we must begin.
Christ’s power rests on us when we admit our weakness simply
because then we also admit His power. We allow His power to take the place of
the false power of thinking “I can do anything.” When we understand and agree
that we have no power (which should be pretty easy, actually, when we see that
our years of trying to quit drinking has gotten us no where), it is then we can
turn to Christ to fill the void left by the deception that we had any power to begin
with. Christ’s power is made perfect in weakness when we admit the weakness
is there! And that He is the power, not us.
Many Christians are waiting for God to strong arm them and
take away their addictions like a mother grabs a sharp stick out of a child’s
hand. And yet, they are waiting double-mindedly, not in complete agreement that they
want this sin gone. If even 1% of me is not in agreement with God about my sin,
I believe I am still in agreement with myself about that sin and it will not go
away because I'm not letting it.
Only when I agreed with God 100%: heart, mind, body and
soul, that drinking for me was a sin, did God change my heart and remove the
desire for alcohol. And He has done it with numerous other sins in my life, and
continues to do so.
As long as we are holding onto some aspect of our sin, then
known sin will remain and be victorious over us. We are in cahoots with the
flesh and the devil, not God.
But when we see our weakness as the way to Christ working in
our lives to remove sin, in complete agreement with Christ’s estimation of our
sin, we will, like Paul, boast in this weakness because it is the way to Christ’s
lasting victory over sin in us.
“Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the
Lord is, there is freedom. And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s
glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever increasing glory,
which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.” 2 Corinthian 17-18
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation;
the old has gone, the new has come!” 2 Corinthians 5:17
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