ADDICTIONS

ADDICTIONS

 

Our Creator has built into every person the desire and the need for love and acceptance. People need to be able to give and receive love freely! But not everyone is able to do that for a variety of reasons. Some of these reasons are based on their environment, or family situation. Sometimes it can even be something that has been inherited, or passed down from past generations, like rejection or fear for example. And we must realize that we have an enemy who is always trying to keep us in bondage, and he has lots of invisible demon helpers to do his work for him. God has created us so that when we love Him, love ourselves, and love others, (Matt 22:37-39) our body produces the proper hormones like (serotonin) that make us feel good. A shortage of this hormone in our system causes us to look for a substitute, which can be any one of many things like food, alcohol, tobacco, or various drugs etc. People who have deep problems but live in denial are especially prone to addictions. It is difficult to walk away from addictions while still feeling unloved. A person must choose between bondage and freedom, God won't do it for us no matter how much we pray. (Deut 30:19). The Bible says choose this day whether we want blessings or curses, life or death!

 

Our Creator God created each one of us with this ability to make choices they can be good choices or bad choices. These choices are made by our "will", which along with "intellect" and "emotions" make up our "soul". Like all three parts of our soul, our will can be influenced by many different factors. We must keep this in mind when we try to understand addictions, whether for ourselves or others. The power over addictions or any other problem is always available through God. But it is only available on God's terms. On certain occasions He can move in our lives by supernatural methods that we call "miracles", but usually He operates according to His normal divine order. This requires a person to be in relationship with Him as a member of His Forever Family, and this is only possible by believing in, and receiving His Son Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. (John 14:6). This requires exercising "faith" which is a gift from Him, as explained by Paul as recorded in (Eph 2:1-10). When we do this and ask Him to forgive us of our sin, He will forgive us and cleanse us of all our unrighteous deeds, and adopt us into His Forever Family. At that point in time He gives us His Holy Spirit to dwell within our spirit. We are then qualified to ask Him for healing or deliverance from any bondage or addiction!!

Sincerely submitted.

Dave Jamer                                                                            30/04/12

A Blueprint For Life

A BLUEPRINT FOR LIFE

 

The daily devotional word for today in ODB was written by Joe Stowell and his closing line was "The Bible is the Christian's blueprint for life", from which I got the idea for this article. As followers of Jesus we all believe the Bible is God's Word from cover to cover, and contains everything He wants us to know in order to live a life that is pleasing to Him. He personally chose the authors of the 66 books that the Bible contains, and His Holy Spirit supplied them with the proper words to use. So in the true sense He, the Holy Spirit, is the real Author of the "Book". (2 Tim 3:16-17). So we can safely depend on the Holy Scriptures to use as a "blueprint" to direct our life. I have found the OT books set the outline, or the basis for our system of "spiritual values" written by men like Moses, King David, or one of the prophets like Isaiah or Jeremiah, but NT writers like Paul condense these truths in his letters written to the various churches he had established in the first century. Some of these letters like Romans, Ephesians, Colossians, and Philippians plus others, make up a good part of the NT, and along with the words of Jesus as recorded in the four gospel accounts, attract most of my attention.

 

So I will quote a few passages from some of Paul's letters in the balance of this article. Let us start with (1 Cor 3:10-11) where he speaks about building our lives on the only safe "foundation", which is our Lord Jesus Christ. Then from (Phil 2:3-4) we read some good advice from Paul about valuing others above ourselves by humbly serving them. Then to finish off our blueprint for life we can read from Paul's classic letter to the church at Rome. In (Rom 12:9-21) from my NKJV study Bible, the heading of the section is called "Behave like a Christian". You can take lots of pointers from these verses that will help you to complete your blueprint for living. Such as "be kindly affectionate to one another with brotherly love", "bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse", "If it is possible, as much as it depends on you, live at peace with all men", and "do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good". Of course we realize that this is only possible as we yield to, and be filled with, the Holy Spirit! (Eph 5:18), If we were to attempt these actions in our own strength we would surely fail. But thank God we know from reading many scriptures that once we receive Jesus as Lord and Savior, and Father "adopts" us into His Family, The Spirit is given to us as our faithful Guide and Teacher!!

Sincerely submitted.

Dave Jamer                                                                                    09/05/12

We Harvest What We Sow

WE HARVEST WHAT WE PLANT

 

The scripture has a lot to say about sowing and reaping a harvest. In his letter to the churches in Galatia, Paul makes some powerful statements in (Gal 6:7-10). He starts off by declaring "you always harvest what you plant", in other words there is more than one kind of seed, but the harvest will always be of the same type as the seed sown. Remember there is always a time factor of several months in the natural, between sowing the seed and reaping the harvest. The same principle applies to the spiritual realm, which is what we want to consider. Some folks seem to grow old gracefully, while others become grouchy and ill-tempered. This doesn't happen suddenly, but gradually over a period of time. If we were able to go back in time to see what sort of things these people sowed into their lives and relationships with others, we would probably see the reason for the difference!

 

C S Lewis is credited with saying "Every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before". If this is true, and I have no reason to doubt it, then we need to be very careful what type of choices we make. We can choose to submit our wills to line up with God's, or we can choose to follow our own desires, or those of certain friends. The result will not always be seen immediately, but will show up in your life eventually. So why not heed the advice of Paul "Don't be misled----you cannot mock the justice of God. You will always harvest what you plant. Those who live only to satisfy their own sinful flesh nature will harvest decay and death from their sinful nature, but those who live to please the Spirit will harvest everlasting life from the Spirit. So let's not get tired of doing what is good. At just the right time we will reap a harvest of blessing if we don't give up." The question we have to ask ourselves then is, which way am I sowing? Am I sowing to the Spirit or to the flesh? It seems clear from this scripture passage, as well as others, that the seeds we sow today will determine the kind of fruit we'll reap tomorrow.  We read in

 (Gal 5: 16-21) where Paul describes what he calls the "works of the flesh", as sins that will prevent those who do such things from  their "inheritance" that is being reserved in heaven for us according to (1Peter 1:3-9). With this in mind we should warn people of the eternal danger of being involved in any of these "works of the flesh" mentioned here. Instead of the works of the flesh let it be the fruit of the Spirit listed by Paul in (Gal 5:22-23)!!!

Sincerely submitted.

Dave Jamer                                                                                revised 30/01/13