I am not above falling but I also have seen a lot of victory and am encouraged. I am on a recovery blog where I will read guy’s battles with recovery and some will journal for years and it will cover 95 pages of posts and by page 70 or so you will see that quite soon they are headed for disaster. I was reading one guy’s story for 3 years of ups and downs and he last posted in 2017. You don’t know what happened – maybe he died of an overdose. Maybe he disappeared back into the “lifestyle” of the hog pen forever. Maybe he is in jail.
You don’t know – but you know it didn’t end well.
And if you have struggles with sin, addiction, shame, guilt, whatever, get in a group where you can be accepted and honest. If you have sexual struggle and porn addiction – don’t let that define you. You can find freedom in places like the Conquer Series – https://conquerseries.com/ Or Ministries like Pure Desire. If you have drug addictions, places like Reformers Unanimous (RU) may be a big help.
Monsters live in the dark – so a simple way to find some degree of recovery is to get some experienced leadership involved like a Pastor or someone who has found victory in JESUS – and get a few others with similar struggles, get on a Zoom weekly and go through some materials together, and call each other, pray with each other and then help others. And if you fall see what was going on. Falls are usually a break down for not facing life right and distancing yourself from the pain of recovery. Someone said the opposite of addiction is not recovery- but CONNECTION.
Remain in JESUS and get around some brothers – or if you are a lady, some sisters- who are where you are but then have a leader or two WAS where you are. And then when you see some recovery, look for someone behind you who is now where you WERE.
In a lot of the folks that fall right back to their drug of choice, I see a bit of excuses — almost like your life is harder than all of ours so who can blame them? (The truth is all of our lives can be hard AND I am not saying you don’t have some real issues and problems)
However, many folks are looking for our approval for their falling – almost like a “can you blame me for what I did?” or a “You would have fallen too if you had a life/wife/husband/past/upbringing/tragedy/hardship like mine.”
The excuses don’t work for JESUS. His death and resurrection eliminate any excuses we have. IF we are saved we are a new creature. We have a bible to tell us how to renew our minds. WE have promises of God to lean on and warnings from God to run from.
He does warn we can be given over to a reprobate mind that basically is dead set to continue in that rebellious self serving life that will end up in death. I don’t believe those folks were ever saved to begin with – and many times the problem with back sliders is they never slid forward to true salvation to begin with.
I don’t mean to be harsh to the folks that fell away– and when I was writing to them I felt like I was being mean but my fear for them is they were already gone, either gone from this earth, or just gone spiritually so they won’t even get to read what I wrote. It seems like for many, they are dead set at least on not being able to believe they could ever change and having a give up mentality — and that is why I felt like they basically were looking for just our approval to give into the flesh and not help getting that flesh crucified.
I wrote one guy – “Friend, Real repentance might need to be done if you ever get back on this blog. Faithful are the wounds of a friend. I write this hoping you are still going to be able to get one more log on on this — and that God gives you one more chance. Yes, having the life you have and the marriage you have and the estranged sons you have and the background you have and the falls you have has made recovery difficult. BUT do you truly want to be free– or you do just want us to understand why you do what you do and basically give you our approval that you are a special case that God can’t fix? With God all things are possible.
You can be set free- the Father will be there to meet you with open arms when you decide to return home…..
but you have to be sick of the hog pen.
And that I think is really what is at the heart of what is going on. As miserable as you have been, as hopeless as it seems, as worthless you feel, despite all that — the addictions are the only things that give you that temporarily feeling of life.
And at the same time it’s what is causing a slow, sure death.
You need JESUS. Bottom line. And often we find Him only when we come to the end of ourselves. PRAYING.
Mike,”
That is a good lesson to anyone at any stage on the road to recovery.