God’s timing is best. There are certain lessons like patience, perseverance, and endurance that can only be learned through waiting upon the Lord. Life is much like a puzzle: we all have a handful of pieces, but someone took the box with the picture on the cover. We are left wondering how each piece fits with another. After an extended period of time, sometimes years, we pick up more pieces to the puzzle of life. Parts that once were disconnected start to fit into place. It is at this point that the image begins to take shape. As time goes on, we look back and realize that no pieces were wasted. Everything God gives us fits into the picture of our lives.
God uses every pressure, circumstance, and situation to shape and mold you into the man or woman he desires you to be. His choice weapon is pain. Pain reveals an area that needs to be addressed. It is in the crucible of adversity that character is forged. Think of the example of patience set by some of the founders of Christian faith:
Noah endured mocking and humiliation for more than ninety years while he constructed the ark.
Abraham waited for thirty years before God came through on his covenantal promise.
Joseph endured isolation in a pit and incarceration in a prison before realizing the promise God made to him eleven years before.
Moses wandered in the wilderness for four decades waiting to enter the land that was promised.
Jesus waited thirty years before he began his earthly ministry.
Every day sober is another step toward usefulness in the kingdom of God. You may feel like you’ve missed out on so much because of wasted years, but don’t be discouraged. Surrender daily to the Lord, depend upon his Spirit for strength, and watch him work.
Notes for Recoverers
Completing this book makes for a bittersweet moment. I’ve just received word that Brandon, one of the friends I went back into the world to save, has passed away. The total number of friends I have lost since 2000 is fifteen.
These were not casual, distant acquaintances, but friends with whom I grew up, lived, partied, and had fun.
Brandon’s death hits close to home. He was my size, my height, and my age. I might easily have been him, and he might have been me.
None of the friends I’ve lost set out to die prematurely. They were sons and brothers, nephews and husbands. Each had dreams and goals of changing the world as children. But somewhere along the way, drugs and alcohol controlled them.
No one sets out to waste his or her life. No one sets out to destroy himself or herself. But it happens every day—over and over. Somewhere a person dies from drug abuse every eleven minutes.8 More people overdosed from drugs last year than died in the Vietnam War.
The issue of addiction is both physiological and spiritual. I’m not a medical doctor, so I won’t delve into the neurological issues of dopamine and serotonin, although I have investigated my own genetic challenges. I can tell you, however, that the spiritual battle of drugs is very real too, and here are some lessons I’ve learned along the way:
1. Sobriety without Jesus Is a Dead-End Street
Addiction, at its core, is the sin of idolatry. When you think of idolatry, you may think of images of the golden calf in Exodus or carved statues perched on a shelf in someone’s home. Those are indeed pictures of idolatry, but the meaning goes deeper. “The New Testament,” according to Eerdmans Bible Dictionary, “extends the concept to include any ultimate confidence in something other than God.”9 Basically, anything we worship more than God is an idol.
The all-consuming focus of an addict is finding drugs—and not necessarily to get high. After a few months, the euphoric feeling isn’t the same. There is the need simply to feel normal, or what normal has come to feel like. Friends called it “chasing the ghost.”
Every morning I was consumed with one agonizing thought: How can I score drugs? Like most addicts, I would stop at nothing to get them. I wanted to stop, but I couldn’t. I didn’t know how.
The only person who can set us free from sin is the One who conquered sin, death, and hell: Jesus. The reason I went to rehab twice was because the first time I attempted to do it without Christ.
Sobriety without Jesus is a dead-end street.
Think of addiction as a prison cell that detains you. Unless someone unlocks the cell door and sets you free, you’re enslaved. You may experience seasons of sobriety or stints of abstinence, but long-term victory over an addiction is unattainable in our own power. And the reality is, even if I had managed to get sober without ever putting my faith in Christ, I would’ve been freed from one prison in this life only to enter into another in eternity.
If you have never acknowledged your sins before God and asked him to set you free, I want to encourage you to do that right now. When is the best time to ask for forgiveness from you sins? Now. There is nothing magical about the prayer you pray. What’s important is the desire of your heart. When you realize you can’t save yourself, and that Jesus is the only one who can, you will experience a new life in Christ. Sometimes it takes us getting so low that the only place to look is up to God.
But Jesus doesn’t promise an easy life just because you’re a Christian. We are still in a daily battle with the world, our fleshly desires, and the devil. Every day we must die
