Hey Chris! What Keeps You Sober? Pt 2

by Chris Long | Apr 5, 2023 | Christian Thought, My blog | 0 comments

Part 2

Let’s start by answering the question, what keeps me sober? What is my highest motivation? When I am tempted I can honestly say there is one thing that helps me overcome, and it is not the love and respect of my family, the security of my job, or the opinions of those around me.

It is God. When I am tempted to fall, when I want to fall, God is the first to enter my meditations. Believing in and serving God is not something to be taken lightly, or to be treated as “a common thing.” We must understand who it is we serve and who we have bowed the knee to.

Fear of God

God is perfectly holy. He is perfect love and perfect judgement. He is the Creator of the universe, and of you! He is infinite and all-knowing. He loves me and He loves you so much that He came to earth to prove it. Knowing He would be crucified and would face a horrifying spiritual challenge that we can’t understand. Thereby giving you a way to enter into His perfect and holy presence.

God is awesome! He offers us salvation and eternal life, but only to those who fear Him and His judgement. I fear God’s judgment. I know when I see Him that I will be judged because I am not perfect. But I also know my penalty has been paid for by the blood of Jesus Christ.

This holy and respectful fear of God leads me to desire to be obedient to Him. To love Him back with my sacrifice. My sacrifice is to live a holy life.  To walk as a living sacrifice to God. A life worthy of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

Read 1 Peter 1:13-21

Respect for God

Even though God has saved me through His Son, Jesus Christ, and He has shown me without doubt that He loves me very much, I refuse to take that for granted. Again, as if it is a “common thing.” While I know I am saved, sober or not, I want to honor the gifts God has given me. Sobriety happens to be one of the least of those gifts, when compared to the sacrifice of His Son for my salvation.

It is truly my desire to honor God with my sobriety, and the fact that He gave it to me is enough for me to honor Him with it. How can I take His gift so lightly and behave so flippantly with it, and then say I have respect for God? I can do that with people and institutions, because I can lie and hide from them. Their ignorance is a salve for my conscience.

But it is not so with God. He is all-knowing and His Holy Spirit resides within me.

Read Hebrews 3:12-15

Love for God

The New Testament is full of God’s declaration of love for you. John 3:16 tells us God loves the world so much He sent His only Son to save us. Romans 5:8 tells us while we are still sinners He gave His life for us. Actually, Jesus gave His life while the people He came to save actively ridiculed Him for it. 1 John 4:19 tells us that we love Him only because He first loved us.

After being saved and becoming filled with the Holy Spirit, I can honestly say I have changed. The way I think about things, big things, like abortion, poverty, addiction, capitalism, and culture, have changed. This is an internal change, a change in the spirit and the soul. What I have more of is this: LOVE.

My love for God pushes me to serve Him first, putting aside the desires of my selfish flesh. This includes alcohol and drugs. I don’t want to go back because I don’t want to lose sight of the love I have for God, or the love He has for me.

Ephesians 5:1-2 tells us to be imitators of God. Meaning to walk in love like Christ did. He gave Himself for us. He was a fragrant offering and a sacrifice to God. That’s what the Bible tells us to be, and that is what I want to be. If I start using again, even if I could control it, which I can’t, I would not be loving you like I’m commanded to. I would not be loving you like Christ loved you. Instead, I would be a stumbling block to you. Confusion to you. Even an enabler to you. That is not love. Sobriety is love.

Read Romans 14:14-23

Desire to Obey God

Fear of man can’t keep me from doing anything. Man has the ability to think, to plan, and to organize. If there is something man needs to get away with, he is able to at least convince himself he is smart enough to do so. My wife would be hurt if I started using again. My kids would be confused. As a person I would either be humiliated, or I would stand tall behind a façade of pride. But we would all get over it if we are all aware of our own imperfections. I don’t expect anyone to be perfect if I can’t. Therefor I can forgive an imperfection.

But God is perfect. Although He understands and forgives my imperfections, I desire to please Him with my obedience. 1 Corinthians 9:24 and Hebrews 12:1  encourage me to run the race to the end, with the goal of winning it.

God also gives us His Holy Spirit, who in turn gives us the gift of conviction. Whenever I am tempted the Holy Spirit reminds me what He told me in that pizzeria years ago. It’s my choice if I want to give that gift back to God. I do not want to return anything God has given me, burdensome or not. I only want to obey Him. The conviction He gives us is positive conviction. It is conviction that leads us in the right direction and keeps us standing in the light.

Read Romans 12:1-2

In the end, any success you have over addiction, depression ,anxiety, anger, hate, will come from only one sustainable source, God. Here are some bullet points to get you on that track or put you back on it:

• Accept Jesus as your Savior and ask for His Spirit to live in you and guide you. Your heart is the key here, not your words.
• Read the Bible every day! Period. Ask God to speak and guide you as you read. Show up for God, every day.
• Get involved with other Bible believing Christians. Search out and find a church that believes the Bible is the truth. Avoid liberal or progressive Christianity.

That should be enough to get you started. Reach out to me anytime.

chrislong.swr@gmail.com

Hey Chris! What Keeps You Sober? Pt 1

by Chris Long | Apr 5, 2023 | Christian Thought, My blog | 0 comments

Part 1

Nearly 7 years ago in 2016 God gave me a miracle. After 25 years of chasing the dream through a bottle of booze, He freed me from alcoholism. I can’t tell you how I knew it was a reality. I just did. The miracle was delivered a few days after I completed an assignment given to me by my pastor. It was an assignment of forgiveness.

About a year later that miracle was tested. As I sat alone in a pizzeria that also sold craft beer, I was tempted to have some samples. Why not? I had been free for a year. I was closer to God than ever before. There was no threat of going back to what I was by sampling a couple of craft beers.  Was there?

As I waited for the waitress to come back, God spoke to me. He said, “Chris, if you want to give back the gift I gave to you, then that is your choice.”

Ouch. I ordered water.

Late the next year, in 2017, I would give up drugs for good as well. This was done out of obedience to God, and the blessings of song that came from that will have to be told another time.

Recently I watched a young evangelist, who used to be an addict, tell the woman who was interviewing him that he was a changed man, fully and completely, from the inside out. She led him on by suggesting he had no desire for the old life. “None at all,” she stressed. “Nope.” He smiled and said he had no desire for those things. He was completely free and completely changed.

I can say I hope that was true for him, but it wasn’t. He lied. He relapsed years later and died young.

I have no doubt God freed that man from his addictions and used him for His glory. And I have no doubt God freed me from mine. But there is one thing we can’t overlook: Our flesh!

• Being freed from your chains does not free you from the consequences of your choices.
• We all have it in us to go back.

You might be asking, what keeps me sober? If God gave me sobriety, but He is not keeping me from going back, then what does?

First, I can tell you there is not a man or woman, no prize or possession, that can keep me from self-destruction.  If I put my hope in anything of this world and staked my peace, joy, freedom and sobriety on it, all would be lost in moments.

The most awesome earthly blessing God has given me are my wife and my kids. But I’m not sober today because of them. Having them in my heart helps, but they will drive me to use quicker than they’ll keep me from it. Relationships are challenging.

My obedience and sobriety is possible only by these reasons:

• Fear of God
• Love for God
• Respect for God
• Desire to Obey God

Come back next week and we’ll expound on these principles.

www.singwriteread.com

In the meantime, check out some of our other posts, like this one about not letting our past, or our scars, define who we are today.