Good Morning!

I tell you what, God is amazing! I won’t go into details, but God connected me with someone yesterday in a way that still has me smiling this morning. God has placed it on my heart to reach out and pray for one person each day. He also placed it on my heart to use my phone contact list to do it. Guess what? The very first person I contacted has trials that I am uniquely familiar with. We have had the same experiences. The odds of this happening are zero.

It amuses me because God has orchestrated this whole thing all along. This daily prayer thing wasn’t my idea. He put it on my heart. Seriously. I doubt if I would continue that practice very long. As much as I would like to be known as the guy who prays for people, my track record is, well, let’s say I’m not a good candidate for it. Still, I could feel him leading me on, and I followed. Actually, I was more like a puppet than a sheep. At least a sheep is following on his own feet. On this, I feel God was doing all the work. Whatever the case, it’s pretty neat to see him at work, not only in my life but in the life of another.

I feel I also need to talk a little more about co-dependency and allowing sin to rein in our lives. This may touch many people.

We have all heard the term “tough love,” right? We know that we have to push our little baby birds out of the nest at some point so that they may learn to fly on their own. As much as it hurts, it is something that simply must be done. But, I am beginning to see that this practice is something that is needed in more ways than simply pushing our kids into adulthood.

What I am talking about is tolerating a destructive behavior in our home to the detriment of the other members of the family. We all know that alcoholism, left unchecked, will destroy a family. At the same time, the spouse is encouraged to hang it there because divorce is not the Christian thing to do. Please don’t get me wrong; I’m not advocating divorce. What I am pointing out is the destruction that happens to the family up until the point of divorce. Generally, divorce is the point where someone can no longer take it. Why? Because one spouse won’t get help for their addiction. By that time, the kids have witnessed enough trauma for long enough that they start to have serious problems of their own. Who wouldn’t? I’m starting to understand that serious action needs to be taken far earlier for the benefit of the ENTIRE family. We generally think we need to do everything we can for the benefit of the addict. While that is all fine and good, we turn a blind eye to everyone else.

It seems to me that we go way beyond that point when we see our kids with serious behavioral problems. We have now experienced significant damage that requires a whole new set of treatment BESIDES that required for the addict. There simply must be a better way, and there is. However, it will require us to look at the initial problem in a whole new light.

This new light is our view of sin. There is no way around it, folks, alcoholism is a sin. You can call it a disease or illness or whatever, but that doesn’t change the fact that someone is choosing booze over God and harming everyone in the process. That’s sin. And, yes, the alcoholic may be unable to stop on his/her own, but they still are able to say yes or no when offered help.

I am beginning to really see that our lack of admitting this fact is just as big of a problem for the non-alcoholic as it is for the alcoholic himself. We see the destruction it is causing the family, yet we don’t do anything drastic about it. It’s almost as if we are helpless to watch everything be devoured by Satan. Baloney! We are not helpless. We just don’t want to face the hard choices that are required.

I’m going to pick this up again tomorrow. This is a big topic. I need to spend time on it.

Father, thank you for using me as a puppet! I am quite entertained. And grateful. Please use me. Amen.

Copyright © 2018 Scott Powers