Surrender!!!

Working in a treatment center you can discover some really awesome resources for recovery. One night I was flipping through a book about health and nutrition and how much that can contribute to staying clean and sober.

I ran across this page and read amazed how absolutely true it is...

We drank for joy and became miserable. 

We drank for sociability and became argumentative. 

We drank for sophistication and became obnoxious. 

We drank for friendship and became enemies. 

We drank to help us sleep and awakened exhausted. 

We drank to gain strength and it made us weaker. We drank for exhilaration and ended up depressed. 

We drank for "medical reasons" and acquired health problems. 

We drank to help us calm down and ended up with the shakes. 

We drank to get more confidence and became afraid. 

We drank to make conversation flow more easily and the words came out slurred and incoherent. 

We drank to diminish our problems and saw them multiply. We drank to feel heavenly and ended up feeling like hell. 

~Author Unknown

Addiction is a complicated and messy issue and the more I learn about it the more it breaks my heart to realize just how many people struggle with this issue on a daily basis and not just to drugs or alcohol. 

I have been around addicts my whole life. If it wasn't alcohol, drugs, or sports, it was OCD and cleaning issues. It's nothing new to me. But, that's the problem I think. When you grow up with this type of behavior it becomes a very "normal" part of life and you don't see the dysfunction or the damage that it causes. It's not until something smacks you in the face that you can read a poem like this and be able to apply each and every sentence to your own life. 

The thing about addiction that people don't always understand is that you can become addicted to anything. Gambling, work, drama, being sick and getting attention, food, entertaining, being needed, other people's addictions (co-dependence), even exercise and health. It's all about masking some sort of pain and using your addiction to prevent you from dealing with actual feelings. Anything we can do to avoid our actual feelings or to face any type of pain right? Anything we can do to avoid life or avoid facing who we really are or what we think we're not. I think that's the culture that we've grown up in.

The danger that we face with addiction is putting our addictions above our God. How you ask? Well the Bible says,

"Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.

Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me." (Exodus 20:3-5)

Many times people read this story or verse and they apply it only to the situation that it was written. God was not only talking to the people of Egypt and telling them not to build the golden calf that they eventually built anyway, He was also telling generation upon generation that NOTHING should come above our love for Him, or worship of Him, our service to Him. I am as guilty as anyone for this any this is why I am writing this. 

I don't read my Bible enough, I don't spend enough time in prayer, I don't go to church services and worship Him with others who believe the same as me, I don't meditate enough with Him or spend time talking with Him because other things come first and then I just don't have the time. Even as I set here writing this, I should probably just get off the computer and spend time with Him. 

When we put our addictions above our Creator we are putting ourselves exactly where the devil wants us...not thinking about Him. The Liar will then use that opportunity to glorify our addiction and make it appealing to us because we're not taking the time to listen to the Holy Spirit and His constant appeal to us to come back to Him. The Accuser will then whisper in our ears that we're not good enough to go back to God. 

My grandfather was very guilty of this when he was alive. He was always trying to fix something in order to come back to God. If he could have just quit smoking, if he could have just quit drinking, not watching NASCAR races on the Sabbath, etc, etc, etc. The excuses were abundant as to why he couldn't come to God. Those feelings are Satan, plain and simple. We are NOT good enough and there is NOTHING we can DO to ever be good enough. 

"For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast." (Ephesians 2:8-9)

Once we understand and accept this free gift from our Savior it becomes a whole lot easier to accept ourselves, faults and all, and know that we don't have to try and make ourselves better and we never will be able to. He will do that. The key in understanding that is one simple word...surrender. We must surrender ourselves to Him and to His will and His plan. It's scary, I know. I am a control freak. I think I have to have control over every single situation or I don't know...the world will just explode I guess. It's pretty silly...this human understanding. But again, that is where The Liar wants me...not to understand and not to comprehend, not to receive, not to feel blessed, not to feel recovered, or loved, protected or redeemed. Well, it's all lies. Once we understand that and accept it, life will become a whole lot simpler and easier to work through and our addictions, no matter what they are will become easier and easier to overcome. 

My plea to myself and to you is to just surrender!!