Christian Living

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We should not condemn people who are caught up in the voluntary slavery of drug addiction and should offer them help. Conquering addiction is a process, and loved ones who are in their corner get hurt in the process.

Conquering Life Prison and Recovery Ministries (CLPRM) in Feasterville, PA  recently started a meeting Thursday nights to help loved ones of those struggling with addiction cope with the colateral damage they do to them and to help their loved ones overcome the addiction.

This past July 4, God called home a woman I loved. The autopsy showed she was clean when she died. The cause was listed as natural, a result of a heart problem. It was not a spirtual heart problem - she accepted Jesus as Lord and Savior during her brief season with me. I believe her death was a result of 30 years of past drug abuse, and maybe from smoking, which contributes to heart disease.

The woman is a particular in the book  I'm working on about how the faith community helps people struggling with addiction :"As Iron Sharpens Iron; A Journey Through The Valley of Death."  I gave her a fake name, Katherina, after the shrew in Shakespeare's "The Taming of The Shrew." As in the play, where Petruchio uses irony and satire to tame the shrew and had Katherina's best interests in mind, I appeal to Christians to encourage their loved ones to quit their besetting sin, hold them up, but show tough love when neccessary.

To help those struggling with addiction we need to be a good Biblical friend. As Pastor James MacDonald writes in I Really Want to Change...So, Help Me God, "a Biblical friend holds you up when you stumble." 1 Samuel 23:16-18   And "a Biblical friend holds you down when you stray." 2 Samuel 12: 1-15. Both are neccessary to help people change.

I recently started seeing someone else who has struggled with the voluntary slavery of addiction. I'll call her Katherina II. After seeing her for only about a week, she already hurt me. I recognized, almost too late, some of the tricks that the first Katherina pulled on me. I almost forgot the lessons I learned at Drug Street University under professor Katherina I.

I also learned a lesson, about myself, from professor Katherina II. I am a recovering Romantic, and I realize that a good part of my problem in squaring with God's will in taking Katherina I home is, as the case with drug addiction, idolatry. In time, Katherina I and I developed a healthy, Godly relationship and started growing in the faith together. But in my heart I did not let her go when God called her home.

A statement in a recent GriefShare video greatly helped me to submit more to God's will: The time you spent with your loved ones was precious, but not essential, in that, although you greatly miss them, you can live without them. Only God is essential; you cannot live without Him!  I can live without Katherina I; I just don't want to, although I've begun to accept and submit to God's sovereign will.

There's nothing wrong with a man loving a woman, as long as you don't love her more than you love God. Seek God's kingdom first and don't get hung up on the things of this world.

Thy will be done!

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