Have you ever received a gift that you cherished? Maybe it was the best gift you received for your birthday a certain year, or it was given by someone you admired or respected. Then you returned it, and you didn’t even get a refund. Could you imagine doing that? That is exactly what I almost did with a gift that God had given to me one summer day in Athens, Ohio. I learned a great lesson that day, what we Christians like to call, “revelation.”
“Hi, my name is Chris, and I’m an alcoholic.” I have not been to an Alcoholic Anonymous meeting, but being a persistent drinker is where this story begins. I didn’t drink because I liked the taste, although I did like the taste. I drank to feel something. Sometimes I drank to feel nothing. Either way, I drank to get drunk. One day, after drinking with a purpose for several days, I realized that I had succeeded, even if only for a short while, in drinking my troubles away. My rocky marriage, business stress, a baby in the house, working on a Master’s, but mostly it was the rocky marriage that I was escaping. One day I realized that I hadn’t thought about any of those things for at least a day in a half. I had done it! I had done what they said could not be done, I had drank my problems away. But there they were, approaching at great speed and ready for rendezvous in about thirty seconds. It turns out I did not succeed, but that moment was eye opening because it reflected to me what I had become in my house.
Another day I was driving to scout a project in Missouri, it was ten in the morning. I heard a beer bottle rattle beneath my seat and when I reached under, I found two full bottles of beer. I drank them both, and probably got a six pack for the drive home that night.
I started drinking at a very young age, at twelve or thirteen, and since high school alcohol came to define a large part of who I was. When I came to the end of myself in my early 30’s and accepted Jesus Christ as the Son of God and my Savior, I admitted to Him more than once, that I was aware He would require me to carry this burden for the rest of my days. By reading the narrations above you can see that escape was unlikely, freedom impossible. I knew I was destined to fight with my wife over it, to continually disappoint her, to occasionally embarrass my kids, eventually get a DUI and enter financial distress, and I’d never be able to quit. I accepted it, and I let God know as much. I didn’t expect anything of Him, I didn’t deserve it.
I am so thankful I serve the God of miracles!
One day at church, in June of 2016, I asked my pastor for prayer. He told me to go home and make a list of all the things I needed to forgive my father for, and to do it today. I thought that was an odd request, since it had nothing to do with what I asked him to pray for. I didn’t make that list that day, but it stayed on my heart, and I decided to be obedient to the request. What could it hurt? About a week later I sat in my car, it was late at night, and I got out my computer and I made that list. It took about ten minutes, and I included both parents in it. I closed my computer and that was the end of it, I didn’t even show it to my pastor or tell him I had done the assignment. I don’t know how many days had passed, but it wasn’t many (I like to think it was the third day). I woke up one morning and it was as clear in my mind as is my own name, I was freed from alcohol addiction. I can’t explain how or why I knew, I just knew that it no longer defined who I was, it no longer had any power over me. I didn’t ask God for it, I didn’t pray about it (except for in the negative), and I didn’t expect it, but it happened.
A year later, in the spring of 2017, I found myself scouting a project for the Wayne National Forest in Athens, Ohio. Athens is a small college town with a nice campus and a “strip” that houses shopping, restaurants, and bars. It was a beautiful sunny day when I arrived, and saving the field work for the next day, I explored the town and ended up walking the strip. As I walked the sun was shining brightly on a brick wall across the street, and in that brick wall was an open door, and in the open door was blackness. It was literally a black rectangle in a brick wall. Music, laughter, talking, and the clinks of glasses could be heard as they leaked out into the street. I contemplated my new freedom from alcohol, and I concluded that last year that black hole in the wall would have been my first stop, and possibly my only stop, before I stumbled out and went back to my hotel room. Instead, I enjoyed a nice walk, saw the sites, and ended up in a restaurant that grew its own vegetables. This restaurant also produced its own line of craft beers, about 40 of them! I received a menu and the waitress said she’d be right back. I picked out a dish for dinner and then contemplated the rows of tappers on the walls. I wondered if it would hurt is I had one glass of beer. I had everything under control, a freed man from the grips of alcohol, so surely, I could enjoy the taste of one beer. Then I thought better of it, and leaned towards a sampler, what is called a flight. Then I could taste more than one kind and still have the equivalent of one beer. Ready to order, and pleased with my ability to enjoy these drinks, thanks to the freedom I received a year earlier, I waited for the waitress to come back. She didn’t come. I waited. I thought. She didn’t come. I waited. I thought. Then the Holy Spirit spoke to my heart. He said, “Chris, if you want to give back to Me the gift I gave to you, then that is your choice.” The waitress came. I ordered water.
Do you see how easy it is, even unknowingly, to return or reject a gift or a blessing the Lord has given to us? If I had taken those drinks that day, isn’t it possible that I would have lost the protection of that miracle I received a year earlier? A miracle, mind you, that affected my life so profoundly that I was walking down a sidewalk a year later contemplating how it had radically changed my life! I was minutes away from returning that gift to God!
What does God say in His word?
Maybe you haven’t returned a gift from God, but have you set one aside, or put one on a shelf for a little while? Then it is time to pick it back up, dust it off, and reclaim it. James 1:17 tells us that “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.” That tells me if God gave you a gift, He gave it to you for a reason, and that reason still stands because God does not second guess the gifts He gives to you. It is still there, you can take it back, even if the world has deceived you away from it, or even taken it away from you. Ephesians 2:8 tells us that another gift from God is that we have been saved through faith, by grace. It is not our own doing. You have an abundance of grace available to you, and it is full of love which will cover a multitude of sins. The world, your mistakes, even your rebellion, can’t take you away from God, because by grace you have been saved through faith. I know you still have that faith.
Finally, God gave us the greatest gift in the history of the world. John 3:16, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” He did not send His Son to condemn you, He sent Jesus to save you, to give you life that you may have it in abundance on this side of heaven. I can testify that I am a free man today, only because I have Jesus Christ in my heart. If you have forgotten Jesus, or have not yet considered Him, now is the time to return and now is the time to seek. Do not wait. You are only putting off the greatest journey of your life.
Believe. Taste and see. Search your heart for what is already there.
Amen.
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