The Bible gives two principles for weeding our garden.

#1. The renewing of our mind. This means getting away from the old friends that fed into our problem. It means changing the way we talk. The Bible says that the tongue is the rudder of our life. Just as a rudder gives direction to a ship, the tongue gives direction to our lives. The key concept here is change. Change where we go. Change what we say. Change how we think—giving our hearts and lives to Jesus. Instead of the bar room, it is the church. Instead of the drug pit, it is fellowship with Christian people who love GOD.

#2. Planting good seeds in our lives. This means discipleship. Discipleship consists of:
Bible reading - Prayer - Being with the body of Christ (church) - Being a part of a small group (so people can hold us accountable) - Repentance (changing direction) and receiving God’s forgiveness - Forgiving others - Forgiving ourselves

This is the planting process. It will produce a crop of good things that will then produce a harvest of good things. I want to emphasize to you, that this takes time. In time the exponential curve will reverse and you will be lifted out of the pit of despair that your addictions have plunged you into.

Never! Never! Never! Never give up!!! Remember: GOD says I will never leave you nor forsake you.
If God is for you, who can be against you? God bless you as you press on to the good harvest....

Always for you....Pastor Lloyd

DEALING WITH ADDICTIONS
How Jesus Can Overcome Habits

It has been some 50 years now since I came to know Jesus. My life was in shambles as a result of the path or route I had chosen for myself in this game of life. Following my discharge from the military I was married. This should have been a great time in my life but some of the bad choices I had made along the way came home to roost and brought serious consequences with them. We all develop good and bad habits that take root in our lives. It really comes down to we reap what we sow. We reap what we sow, we reap more than we sow and I believe we reap more than we know. No one ever sits down and happily declares, “I think I will become addicted”. It always occurs in a gradual process and we wake up too late. We are hooked and not able to go back to where we started.

Unfortunately, I was hooked by several addictive habits, some more destructive than others. Let me give you one example of a habit that had me in its grip for many years. Smoking. As a youth my parents told me not to smoke, even though my father smoked. I wanted to be free to smoke and had no understanding of the addictive nature of smoking. So I embarked upon my “freedom” only to later discover that I was now not free, not to smoke. A choice that I thought was freedom now became bondage. In fact I became so addicted that if I did not have cigarettes in the house when I woke up, I would dig through dirty ash trays looking for a usable butt so I could get a couple of drags to satisfy my cravings. The Bible says in Matthew 7:13 “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”

Wide is the gate that leads to destruction. The gate is wide but as we proceed, the road narrows and our freedom shrinks. Once I wanted to be free to smoke, now I am not free, not to. On the other hand, narrow is the gate that leads to life. Again referring to our illustration #1 once we enter the narrow gate the road widens. Now I am free! And actually, I smoke all I want to, I just don’t want to! A train is only free to run when it is on its tracks. GOD never made us to be in the bondage of addiction. God made us to be free to live our lives the way HE, our Creator, intended.

This illustration not only applies to smoking but to drinking, drugs, pornography, gambling or any other addictive behavior. When I came to Jesus I had an alcohol addiction. Knowing I had a problem, I sought help from doctors and mental health care professionals. However, in their sincere effort to try to help me by prescribing drugs to overcome the addiction, I then acquired an addiction to the prescription drugs! Now I had two problems. After a while I would take the prescription pills and wash them down with the alcohol.

The mechanics of how we become addicted can help us win over these problems. We start out very innocently, and progress until we are caught in the vice. I will use a mathematical formula called the Exponential Curve, to describe the process. If you are asked if you would rather have a million dollars or a penny doubled every day, for 30 days, most people answer “a million dollars”. However, they do not realize the power of the curve.

The chart shows the 30 days and the powerful and devastating results of the curve. When we participate in sin, it always begins small. We tell ourselves, “I can handle this!” Throughout the first ten days we can enjoy our sin and feel good about it.

Clearly the first ten days don’t look like much, and even after 20 days, the numbers are still small, but look at the last 10 days. It’s like an explosion! This is what the progression of addiction is like. The first time we take that drink or use that first drug or smoke that first cigarette, or the first time we flirt with pornography we tell ourselves “I can handle this!!!” However, as we continue in these behaviors we are further sucked into the need for more and stronger substances until we realize we don’t have it, but it has us! We no longer possess the self-control to stop. The longer we feed this thing, the more addicted we become. This thing is bigger than our willpower and now requires a power outside of us to get free from its grip. Our mind tells us there is no hope or help for us. That is a lie! GOD sent his SON Jesus, to die on a cross to break Satan’s grip on our lives. He is our Hope and our Help.

The exponential curve is the formula behind sowing and reaping. Remember, you reap what you sow. We reap more than we sow. If I plant a field full of watermelons, I could carry the seeds to the field in a bag. But after the sowing process takes over and the watermelons grow, I would need a truck to harvest all the watermelons—not to mention all the seeds that are in all the watermelons. When we plant sinful habits in our lives we start out small. But if we persist and keep planting, eventually our lives go to seed and produce more than we could ever imagine and sometimes more than we can bear. This process is the anatomy of addiction.

It is clearly time for the good news! GOD knew about your situation and always had a plan for your way out of any dilemma. He knows us and our weaknesses and ability to get in over our heads. In HIS marvelous love for us, He has planned for our success. When I was at the bottom of the barrel, sick and defeated, about to lose everything that mattered, GOD gave my wife, Faye, this Scripture from Jeremiah 29:11-14:

“For I know the plans I have for you” declares the LORD. “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you,” declares the LORD, “and will bring you back from captivity.”

God has plans for you and me and it is to give us hope and a future, so don’t give up! Any pit that we have gotten ourselves into, the blood of Our Lord Jesus can bring us out of. On a personal note, my addictions were so strong and all encompassing that I ended up in the hospital with liver problems. When I withdrew from the alcohol and drugs my body had convulsions. One night in sheer desperation, I looked up and said to the Lord, “If you are real, change my life.” I saw no fireworks or skywriting, but I began to notice subtle changes in my life. God opened the door for a Pastor and a wonderful church to take an interest in me and my family. If you are struggling with an addiction, you need to be in a church, one that believes in God’s power to heal, deliver and forgive.

Want to know how to get started on the road to recovery? It all begins with you making a quality decision—a decision that can continue even with some of the inevitable failures you will encounter. One day a drug addicted man came to see me in my office. He had just “fallen off the wagon” as they say and was being very hard on himself. I used this illustration to help him.

Imagine you are in a room with a locked door. On the other side of the door is a talking dog. The dog keeps talking, trying to get you to open the door and let him in. Finally you weaken, even though you know you shouldn’t, and open the door for the dog to enter. As soon as the door opens the dog runs into the room and fastens his teeth on your leg! What do you do? Beat yourself or beat the dog? Clearly you should beat the dog. But all too often we beat ourselves.

A quality decision will get you past those weak moments and get you back on the road to victory. The road back follows the same road as the one we came in on. We begin sowing so we can reap exponential blessing. We begin to weed our garden and start to plant good seeds. Again this process is not a fast one. We need to remember that we are still reaping what we sowed last week, last month, last year and in previous generations (that’s another article). I am saying this because I want you to have patience. It took you your whole life to get into this mess, you need to give God some time to bring you out.